Jes Hooper is a postgraduate researcher in Anthropology at the University of Exeter, and the founder of The Civet Project, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about civet exploitation in the coffee trade. Her doctoral research focused on human-civet interactions and “disappearance” in the Anthropocene. She has published two Open Access articles in ASI’s managed journals: “Contamination: The Case of Civets, Companionship, COVID, and SARS” (2022) in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, and “Cat-Poo-Chino and Captive Wildlife: Tourist Perceptions of Balinese Kopi Luwak Agrotourism” (2022) in Society & Animals.
In celebration of World Civet Day today, we sat down with Jes to discuss her inspiring journey from academic research to tangible action, and the ways in which we can transform academic insights into real-world impact.
ASI: Your main research focus is human-civet relationships within wildlife trade networks. Can you tell us more about civet species, and how you first identified them as your research interest?
JH: Certainly! I love introducing people to civets as they are cryptic and beautiful species but many people recognize them from their association to products rather than as intrinsically important beings.
Civets belong to an ancient family of small carnivores called Viverridae which belong to the Feliformia suborder of “cat-like” animals. Within the Viverridae family there are civets, genets, binturong and linsang, which are found throughout Africa and Asia. Civets are very diverse, as there are 36 species, but most are nocturnal, solitary, and arboreal. Generally speaking, they look like domestic house cats in size and body shape but they are more closely related to mongoose than cats!
I had identified civets as my research interest a long time before my PhD. An undercover investigation by the BBC into coffee fraud in 2013 had shown that civets were increasingly being captured, caged, and force-fed coffee for the production of kopi luwak- the world’s most expensive coffee. The coffee was then being sold on the international market as “wild collected,” securing the highest price possible. In the short film, they showed the horrifying conditions of the civet coffee farms and I noted then that binturong (the largest member of the Viverridae family) was also present in the farms – but these Viverrids are not traditional kopi luwak producers. I began to think through then, how different Viverrid species are perceived and treated by humans and what role the consumer plays within these wildlife trade networks. It was only when anthrozoology became more readily recognized as a discipline that I was able to find a PhD that was suited to the nature of my research interest – the relationship between humans and civets.
ASI: What is kopi luwak and how is it formed?
JH: Civet coffee (also known by the Indonesian name, kopi luwak) is coffee that has been predigested by civets. It is said that wild civets will sneak into coffee plantations at night to sample from the ripest coffee cherries, leaving their scat behind by morning. The farmers then collect the partially digested coffee beans from the scat, which are then cleaned, dried, and roasted. According to civet coffee marketing, civet coffee has a unique taste profile owing to the civet’s digestive enzymes which change the coffee bean’s structural and chemical composition.
Of course, none of this is true. Civet coffee is one of the fastest growing segments of the luxury coffee market, and is predicted to reach a net worth of $10.9 billion USD by 2030 – all of which is made possible by the mass capture, caging, and force-feeding of civets throughout southeast Asia. Whilst civet coffee is available to consumers all over the world (it’s sold in Harrods, on Amazon, and Ebay as well as many individual coffee retailers), there is no certification scheme for wild-collected civet coffee and recent research has debunked the myths that it is unique in its composition. Interestingly, the bulk of the civet coffee industry is driven by tourism.
ASI: Talk to us about the concept of ecotourism, and how the provisioning of wild animals can negatively impact ecosystems and lead to greater rates of human-wildlife conflict.
JH: For many people, the concept of ecotourism is synonymous with supporting local communities and environments through sustainable engagement with nature. Whilst this can be true, it is also often very difficult for travellers to distinguish between legitimate ecotourism and exploitative wildlife tourism. Take civet coffee for example, most civet coffee attractions in Indonesia include “Agrotourism” in the title which leads to misconceptions that the attractions are functioning and traditional family farms. In reality, the attractions are entirely curated for the expectations of tourists who are shown the plant-to-cup process of civet coffee production. Here, civets are caged or even drugged so that tourists can see them. Not only are the conditions in civet coffee attractions unable to meet the most basic needs of civet species, they also contribute to the snaring and caging of wildlife and the disturbance of ecosystems. Throughout my research, almost all the civets I have encountered in civet coffee farms have come from the wild. Many show signs of injury from capture, and tour operators will openly confirm that they source the civets from local trappers. The capture of civets is not sustainable. Civets perform a vital role in the ecosystem as seed dispersers and germinators, and some species of civets have symbiotic relationships with fig trees, a tree species which supports forest life at all trophic levels. If too many civets are taken from the wild, this will have detrimental effects on the ecosystem.
ASI: Many regions in southeast Asia consider civet coffee tours a big part of their ecotourism. How are these tours marketed to tourists and what are the motivating drivers that encourage tourists to participate?
JH: Most civet coffee attractions are integrated into local tours. Drivers will ask their tour group if they like coffee (who doesn’t?!) and then they will stop at a civet coffee attraction on route to a primary attraction (such as a waterfall). It is usually at the civet coffee attraction that tourists learn what civet coffee is, and it is here that they are told the marketing claims that civet coffee is the most unique, rare, and expensive coffee in the world. In fact, most tourists haven’t even heard of civet coffee before. What I found very unsettling from my research is that local people (usually elderly women) are also featured as photo props, alongside civets, within the attraction. Tourists will often come away from the experience claiming they have supported a traditional and family practice, when actually they’ve romanticized a colonial and gendered narrative that local people and wildlife are objects of exoticism to be consumed by the visual gaze of tourists.
ASI: Your article in Society & Animals contributed to Tripadvisor and other major tour operators removing the sale of civet coffee tours on their platform. Can you describe the process that led to this successful shift, and what other contributing factors played a part in Tripadvisors’ decision to remove civet coffee tours as a recommended tourist activity, if any?
JH: My article in Society & Animals, “Cat-Poo-Chino and Captive Wildlife: Tourist Perceptions of Kopi Luwak Agrotourism,” was a thematic analysis of more than 3,000 Tripadvisor reviews from tourists who had visited civet coffee attractions in Bali. Each of the attractions was selected for study because it featured wild animals. It was during the research process that I began to see how prevalent civet coffee tourism was as an industry, how devastating it was to civets, and how misinformed tourists were about the entire process and their role in it. It was also interesting to see from the research results that most tourists did not pay much attention to the civets. Instead, tourists were most interested in seeing coffee in its plant form because it is coffee that they have a daily interaction with but only in its processed form. This told me that civet coffee attractions could simply remove the exploitation of civets without losing tourist interest. It also highlighted that Tripadvisor could be doing much better in informing its online visitors. Civet coffee should be covered by their animal welfare policy, but at the time of my research it wasn’t.
My research, combined with a short film that I co-produced in 2023-2024, enabled me to take my observations to Tripadvisor directly. After we finished filming, I tasked several students with auditing travel companies again, to see if any changes had been made since my original research. What they found was shocking: Although 9 out of 10 of the world’s largest travel sites had animal welfare policies, all were selling tickets to civet coffee attractions that included live civets. Not only this, but civet coffee tourism had spread to seven different countries in Asia, and Tripadvisor alone had over 350 individual tour listings. Conversation with Tripadvisor helped us to get the ball rolling, and soon we had agreement from Tripadvisor, AirBnB, Klook, Viator, Booking.com, and TUI that they would no longer sell tickets to civet coffee tours.
Unfortunately, six months on and a follow-up audit of Tripadvisor has revealed that they have only addressed 9.7% of the listings we flagged to them as in breach of their own animal welfare policy. They now claim that they are reviewing their animal welfare policy and won’t be making any further changes whilst this is in progress. They won’t tell us how long this will take. We are not giving up though. We are holding Tripadvisor accountable, and are working with a number of other animal welfare organizations to do so.
ASI: In 2023, you were awarded a grant by the Culture & Animals Foundation towards the production of a 30-minute documentary on the civet trade which premiered in April 2024. Talk to us about how your film Civet Coffee: From Rare to Reckless has contributed towards a shift in how people understand civets and the civet coffee crisis.
JH: Our film is a 30 minute journalistic documentary into the emerging civet coffee tourism industry in Vietnam. Kindly supported by CAF and Wild Welfare, our film has been tremendously effective in shifting public opinion of civets and civet coffee. Not only has our film won four industry awards for its impactful production, but it has been screened across the world since its release in early 2024. So far, we have hosted screening events to 3,510 people at universities and community centers in Vietnam, Japan, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA. The film has been watched 2,500 times on YouTube, and it is also available as part of in-flight programming on selected airlines thanks to our partnership with Ecoflix, the world’s first nonprofit conservation-focussed streaming service. This is a particularly important achievement for us as we can directly reach travelers, the main target audience of the film.
In addition to opening dialogue and raising the profile of civet species, the film has also helped to put pressure on Tripadvisor to remain true to its original promise. Our film links to a petition calling on Tripadvisor to remove the sale of civet coffee attractions and to list all review pages with an animal welfare warning.
ASI: An educational outreach component is crucial to creating real-world impact and social change outside of academic institutions. What inspired you to move beyond traditional academic formats and turn your research into a documentary film and outreach program?
JH: Originally, I wanted my research to reach consumers of civet coffee and so I set up a website called “The Civet Project” where I could “translate” my academic research into more accessible blogs and videos. The website became really important for my research which was impacted by the COVID-19 lockdowns, as it helped me reach participants to interview whilst I could not visit the civet coffee attractions myself. It was during COVID, when I was interviewing lots of tourists, consumers, conservationists, and animal welfare experts that I kept getting the same question: Was The Civet Project an organization designed to protect civets, and if not, could it be?
It was also via the website and my posts on LinkedIn that my work got the attention of Jack Wootton, the director of our film. And so, during the production of the film itself, I began registering The Civet Project as a charity with the help of the experts who I had got to know through my earlier research. Now, The Civet Project Foundation is the leading voice for Viverrids worldwide.
ASI: When visiting the civet farms in Vietnam, did you face any resistance from farm owners when entering with camera equipment? Or are these farms frequently open to the public and tourist tours?
JH: All the farms we visited in-person were open to the public and so there was no resistance to us filming. We did, however, suspect that the conditions “behind the scenes” would be even worse than those displayed to tourists. To see these conditions, we spoke with farm owners and enquired into the possibility of purchasing civet coffee in bulk, and soon had several farm owners sending us videos and images on Whatsapp to prove they could supply the vast quantities of civet coffee we had proposed to them. The conditions we witnessed in this way were heartbreaking and led us to even more upsetting realities. Farm owners also encouraged us to look into civet farming Facebook groups which revealed the true extent of animal trafficking that supplies the civet coffee industry.
ASI: How can we better bridge the gap between academia and other disciplines to encourage more forms of creative activism and humane education?
JH: I am a huge advocate for arts-based and transdisciplinary collaboration. The most important impacts that have come from my own research have been facilitated through such collaborative and creative processes. I highly encourage academics to engage with performance artists, visual artists, and other creatives to help explore modes of public and industry engagement and provocation. I think research should be as much an invitation to participate and explore as much as a fact-finding mission. Whilst it can be initially outside of our comfort zones, researchers ought to be willing to try sharing their research in new ways such as via film, podcast interviews, and blog articles. The best way to do this is to collaborate with people who thrive in these creative environments.
ASI: What should people look out for when selecting ecotourism activities, and how can travelers identify unethical animal tourism enterprises?
JH: Really, tourists should be able to trust their travel provider. Unfortunately, as our work has shown, this is not always possible because travel companies frequently and excessively violate their own animal welfare policies. By doing so, travel companies do more harm than good because their customers assume in good faith that all the wildlife tours on offer are compliant with the companies animal welfare policy.
My advice to tourists is twofold: 1) Never pose with wildlife for photographs, particularly when there is a monetary cost to do so. 2) Always ask questions and be very observant. Is the animal likely sleeping in such a loud environment or is the animal perhaps chemically sedated? Is the animal really likely to leave the cage at night and return in the morning as the guide told you, or is the cage lock covered in cobwebs? Where is this infant’s mother and if this animal was truly “rescued” then why are they being used for tourism?
ASI: You reference Lynda Birke’s question of “What’s in it for the animals?” as a motivating factor in your work. As Birke continues, “Animals may be “good to think with,” as some would have it, but that alone is no good to them unless the thinking is accompanied by change.” How can academics, activists, and humane and community educators center animals in ways that reduce animal suffering and have the potential to change human attitudes?
JH: I strongly believe that animals are (and should be represented as) participants and actors within human-animal interactions. Animals shape our perceptions and behaviors as much as we shape theirs. There is rarely such a thing as a one-way human-animal encounter. A first step to center the animal in research is to recognize and challenge the distinction between the false dualisms of “human” and “animal”, “human” and “nature” and “us” and “them”. The second easy step is to speak about animals as persons by replacing objectifying language such as “it” with “they/them/who”. A simple shift in the way we refer to participants in our research can give an inflection of autonomy and sentience for nonhuman animals, a fact that should not be overlooked or purposely revoked through the process of research dissemination.