Kopi Luwak coffee victim – Another civet was found in snares

While on patrol, rangers from the Siamese Crocodile Station (Chhay Areng) found a live civet trapped in a snare. On the same day, the rangers collected 128 other snares from the forest. Many of the snares Wildlife Alliance rangers collect are made specifically to trap civets to sell to “civet farms” to make coffee. Fortunately, our rangers found this civet before the hunter returned and brought him to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center for further medical care.

What You Need to Know about Civet Coffee

Please read the article:  What You Need to Know about Civet Coffee

Wildlife Alliance has rescued over 200 civets from the illegal wildlife trade. However, the international demand remains high and we are seeing civets disappear from the wild at increasing rates. With your help, we can save these animals before it’s too late.

Please read more about our work: Civet Coffee

What is Civet Coffee?

Kopi Luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, has become an international sensation. This exotic coffee sells for $30-$100 per cup and $100-$600 per pound. Retailers of this coffee market it as a rare product sourced from wild civets’ feces. They claim that suppliers need to forage for partially digested coffee beans in the wild, which only allows 1000 lbs of kopi luwak to be produced each year- justifying the high price tag. This may have been how the coffee was originally sourced, but due to the increasing international demand, this story is now far from the truth. In order to satisfy the global demand, “civet poop coffee” is rarely sourced from the wild; it has become an industrialized product. Wild civets are instead held captive and force-fed coffee cherries to produce an estimated 500 tons of this “farmed” product annually.