Quality Coffee Lovers Welcome News of Near Extinct Stenophylla Beans From Sierra Leone

A Wild Species Coffee Bean Could Save Our Premium Taste Daily Brew Addiction AOC Sustainability

A wild species of coffee rediscovered by scientists in the forests of Sierra Leone may stabilize the growing concerns about the global supply of premium coffee in a world that is heating up. Coffee arabica, a plant that prefers mild average annual temperatures of around 66 degrees Fahrenheit and is favored by coffee connoisseurs like Anne, is particularly at risk to climate change. The bean currently accounts for over 60% of the world’s coffee production.

Coffea stenophylla is a wild coffee species from West Africa which, until recently, was thought to be extinct outside Ivory Coast.About two years ago, the plant was re-disco9vered growing wild in Sierra Leone, where it existed as a coffee crop a century ago

Currently modeling suggests that Stenophylla will tolerate global temperatures of around 77 degrees Fahrenheit, 11 to 12 degrees higher than Arabica, and 3.42 degrees higher than the less valued and more bitter Robusta.

"Being somebody who's tasted a lot of wild coffees they're not great, they don't taste like Arabica so our expectations were pretty low," Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at Royal Botanical Gardens Kew in the United Kingdom and lead author of the paper, tells BBC News. “We were completely blown away by the fact that this coffee tasted amazing.”

Still speaking with BBC News, Davis adds that finding a wild coffee with excellent flavor that is also heat and drought tolerant is “the holy grail of coffee breeding.”

Follow the story and more in-depth coffee learnings in AOC Sustainability.

580 Elephants Startle Conservationists with Return to DNC Virunga National Park

Elephants in Congo's Virunga National Park Bring Hope Gone for Decades AOC Sustainability

Virunga National Park, a 790,000-hectare (2-million-acre) stretch of land on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is known for its rich diversity of habitats and rare wildlife. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is Africa’s most biologically diverse protected area. It houses the last of the world’s endangered mountain gorillas and precious other species.

The Virunga National Park borders Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Rwenzori Mountains National Park and Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. Wildlife migration among animals across national borders is common.

There used to be about 8,000 elephants roaming Virunga back in the 1950s, but they were greatly reduced. By the time Paul Allen’s Great Elephant Count came to the park in 2014, the team found only about 300. This devastating statistic declared elephants in Virunga National Park to be critically endangered.

In 2015 Save the Elephants helped put satellite collars on 15 of Virunga’s elephants. Over the course of three years, two of the elephants were illegally killed, but the other 13 moved across the border between Virunga and the Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda — a common migration event for the elehants.

What can be said with certainty is that for many reasons including decades of violence in the DRC, elephants have left the DR Congo, not migrated to it.

Imagine then the extraordinary event that was observed in late 2020, when hundreds of elephants — an estimated herd of 580 savanna elephants crossed over from Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park into Virunga National Park.

It’s not clear yet if the elephants will stay in Virunga — which is not free from violence. In April 2020 12 Virunga Park rangers, a driver and four members of the local community were killed in a violent attack by a militia group. In January 2021, six park rangers patrolling on foot were ambushed and killed by armed assailants.

Conservationists speculate that the elephants may be responding to danger in Uganda not readily understood by local officials. No one knows what to expect, but conservationists are thrilled with this latest development. Read more about this blessed, possibly transformational event: Elephants in Congo's Virunga National Park Bring Hope Gone for Decades