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After surviving the incursions of poachers, loggers and farmers, one of the last great tracts of protected virgin rainforest in South-East Asia is now being destroyed because of booming coffee exports, according to conservationists.

They estimate that about 20 per cent of the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Sumatra has been hacked down for illicit plantations. If the destruction continues unchecked in the 340,000-hectare (840,000-acre) park, some of Asia’s last surviving tigers and the critically endangered hairy rhino, as well as elephants, could vanish within a decade because of the world’s craving for caffeine.

Gone in an Instant, a report published today by WWF, blames international coffee companies for buying illicit coffee — often unknowingly — from middlemen who abuse a lack of regulations to mix beans from the 20,000 tonnes grown illegally inside the park with legitimate crops from elsewhere in Lampung province.

The low-grade robusta beans grown in the area are used to make instant and packet coffee and energy drinks by some of the biggest names in the business, including Kraft Foods, Nestlé and ED&F Man.

Nestlé was one of the companies praised by researchers for trying to find ways of keeping illegal beans out of their coffee products. Others have pledged to take action to deal with the problem after researchers contacted them. Some who were approached, including London-based ED&F Man, denied purchasing any illicit beans, WWF said.

Researchers used satellite imaging, interviews with coffee farmers and traders and monitoring of trade routes to track the progress of illicit coffee from cleared jungle to the breakfast table in Britain, Germany or America.

Nazir Foead, the WWF director of policy, said: “WWF doesn’t want to shut down the coffee industry in Lampung province but we’re asking multinational coffee companies to implement rigorous controls to ensure that they are no longer buying illegally grown coffee.”

At stake is the survival of some of Asia’s rarest and most spectacular mammals, including three subspecies found nowhere else in the world.

The park is home to around 40 Sumatran tigers — about 10 per cent of the animals left in the wild — and about 80 Sumatran rhinos, also known as hairy rhinos, which are found in only three other parks on the island. A quarter of the wild population of 2,000 Sumatran elephants are also thought to be within the park, which is also rich in plant life.

Indonesia is now the fourth-biggest coffee producer in the world after Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam, and half of its production is in Lampung province. The coffee rush has brought settlers from crowded Java or elsewhere in Sumatra, and about 15,000 families taken over plots of land where they grow ginger, cinnamon, rubber and coffee.

WWF estimates that more than 40,000 hectares have been cut down for coffee plantations inside the protected area. Government officials and overstretched park staff have done little to stop them, and most of the farmers make little more than a subsistence living, although selling coffee has given many of them earnings for the first time in their lives.

One coffee farmer, Suratno, moved from Java in 1984 with his family and admits to growing one and a half hectares of coffee inside the forest. He said: “I don’t feel guilty about growing in the wilderness. There is still plenty of forest in there. But I wouldn’t want to see it all destroyed. Then there could be floods and erosion.”

Jonathan Atwood from Kraft, makers of Maxwell House and Kenco, said: “There is a very complex supply chain and traceability is very difficult. We are trying to formulate an action plan with WWF, farmers and the Indonesian Government.”

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