A Cup of Conservation

Zoos Victoria’s Coffee for Wildlife helps to support farmers, protect forests and save wildlife in key coffee-growing regions.

The next time you have a coffee break at the Zoo, you will also be supporting the preservation of rainforests in Sumatra, Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea.

Coffee for Wildlife (launched in October last year) is a new initiative by Zoos Victoria in partnership with Genovese Coffee to support sustainable coffee growers producing beans grown in harmony with forests.

“Melbourne is Australia’s coffee-drinking capital,” says Ash, Zoos Victoria’s Senior Manager — Community Conservation Campaigns.

Melburnians drink around 31 million cups of coffee every week. If we’re going to be drinking that amount of coffee, we need to think about where it’s coming from.”

Unfortunately, deforestation represents a serious threat to highly biodiverse tropical rainforests. The good news is that there’s a way to enjoy your morning macchiato without contributing to further environmental degradation. Coffee for Wildlife supports sustainable farming practices by using shade-grown coffee sourced through partnerships with three key organisations: The Orang Utan Coffee Project in Sumatra, Community

Conservation of Wild Coffee and Natural Forest Management Project in Ethiopia and the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program in Papua New Guinea.

“These projects use shade-grown coffee, which is coffee that’s grown how it’s meant to be grown — beneath the canopy of established trees,” Ash says.

So why is shade-grown coffee a better choice? Much of the coffee currently cultivated around the world is grown in the sun, on cleared land where forests once stood. That’s because sun-grown coffee grows quickly and produces a higher yield, although it’s also a bean that is of lower quality.

“Shade-grown coffee matures in the shade under the forest canopy and this high-quality coffee is much more sustainable,” says Ash, who adds that all Coffee for Wildlife products are certified carbon neutral.

Supporting sustainable growers

Often the best way to support wildlife is to ensure that farmers are supported. Each of the three projects empowers coffee growers to preserve forests by paying them a fair fee for producing sustainably grown coffee and providing infrastructure and training to build skills and capacity. This helps to protect the habitat of species including Sumatran Orangutans, Vervet Monkeys in Ethiopia and Matschie’s Tree-kangaroos in Papua New Guinea.

DID YOU KNOW?

Coffee for Wildlife products are packaged in bags made from certified at-home compostable materials.

“Apart from supporting farmers to grow coffee in a genuinely sustainable way, the Sumatran project directs a portion of proceeds to the Orang Utan Coffee Project, which cares for orangutans that have been injured and can’t return to the wild,” says Ash.

Illegal farming is threatening Sumatra’s precious Leuser ecosystem, which is the last place on earth where tigers, rhinoceros, elephants and orangutans all roam in the wild together. Converting environmentally unsustainable plantations to Orang Utan Coffee Project plantations means farmers are paid well for their product while operating to organic standards and strict criteria that end harmful environmental practices.

In Papua New Guinea, people farming shade-grown coffee in the remote YUS Conservation Area on the Huon Peninsula pledge a portion of their land as habitat for wildlife — with 187,000 acres (i.e. the size of about 37,000 MCGs) secured and protected so far.

As the birthplace of Arabica coffee, southwest Ethiopia is the only place in the world where this prized bean grows native and wild. The Ethiopian Government granted that only the local people of this region can benefit from the forest’s resources (coffee, honey and spices), which means maintaining a healthy and thriving forest is equally important for both people and wildlife in this area.

“The Ethiopian suppliers produce minimal-intervention coffee beneath the forest canopy. They also harvest wild coffee, which grows with no intervention from people whatsoever,” says Ash.