llegal coffee crops threaten endangered animals

Coffee drinkers have been unknowingly consuming a brew made from beans grown illegally in one of the world's most important natural parks, a new report revealed on Jan. 17. The World Wildlife Federation (WWF), a conservation organization, said beans grown in the Bukit Barisan Selatan national park in Sumatra, Indonesia, were being bought by local traders and mixed with legally grown beans before being exported. The 800,000-acre park is a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization world heritage site and one of the few protected areas where three endangered or critically endangered species–Sumatran tigers, elephants and rhinos–coexist. It is also the home of unique and threatened plant species, such as the giant flower amorphophallus. WWF said today that almost 28 percent of the forest had been degraded, 60 percent of that by illegal agriculture. The group's research found that in June 2004 more than 10,000 acres of park land was being used to produce some 19,600 tons of coffee annually. Most wildlife had already abandoned those areas. Heather Sohl, the species officer at WWF-UK, said: "If this trend of illegally clearing park land for coffee isn't halted, the rhinos and tigers will be locally extinct in less than a decade. "We think even the world's most committed coffee drinkers will find this an unacceptable price to pay for their daily caffeine buzz." The WWF report shows that among the companies that have unwittingly bought the coffee are Nestle, Kraft Foods and the British firm ED&F Man Holdings, which claims to be a specialist in "green" coffee procurement. Tchibo and Starbucks are also reported to have received coffee imports from the area in 2004. The report, "Gone in an Instant," says that most of the companies buying the coffee were unaware of its illegal origins, due to the lack of regulations in the region. Draft copies of the findings had been shown to the major recipients of the tainted coffee. Some had denied buying any illegally grown coffee, while others were in talks with WWF on how to avoid buying the coffee and restore the park's habitats, the charity said. Nazir Foead, WWF-Indonesia's director of policy and corporate engagement, said the group did not want to shut down the coffee industry in Lampung province. "But we're asking multinational coffee companies to implement rigorous chain-of-custody controls to ensure that they are no longer buying illegally grown coffee, and we're asking the Indonesian government to better protect the park." WWF said it was also asking the coffee-buying companies involved to provide local Sumatran growers with incentives to switch to sustainable coffee production. The report recommends that the park and local authorities prevent further encroachment and develop regulations to stop illegally grown coffee infiltrating international trade. WWF used satellite imaging, interviews with farmers and traders, and monitoring of trade routes to track the movement of robusta coffee from its illegal cultivation in the park to multinational coffee companies in 52 countries across the US, Asia and Europe. Indonesia is the world's fourth largest coffee producer and the second largest exporter of robusta, which is often used in instant coffee and packaged coffee sold in supermarkets.