Most coffee is consumed far from the landscapes where it is grown. Consumers rarely have an opportunity to see the forests, wildlife, farms, and communities connected to their daily cup—or to understand how different ways of producing coffee can either place pressure on biodiversity or help sustain it. This distance is not the consumer’s fault, and blame is not a useful response. The information has simply not been made visible, accessible, and relevant enough.

However, leaving that distance unaddressed has consequences. Deforestation and biodiversity loss are urgent concerns whose effects extend beyond coffee-growing regions. The loss of forests and wildlife weakens ecosystems, places additional pressure on water, soil, climate resilience, and rural livelihoods, and ultimately affects everyone.

Coffee drinkers can be part of a more positive relationship. Coffees produced with greater care for forests, shade trees, wildlife habitat, and farming communities already exist. When people are given credible information and practical ways to recognize and choose them, an everyday purchase can become an opportunity to support better practices rather than unintentionally contribute to ecological harm.

The urgent need, therefore, is not only to document biodiversity. It is to close the distance between coffee-growing and coffee-consuming worlds. People need to see what is at stake, understand that alternatives exist, and feel able to make informed choices without being shamed or overwhelmed.

I travel to coffee farms, spend time observing birds and other animals, photograph what I encounter, and listen to the people who know and care for these landscapes. I then bring the photographs and stories back to Victoria, where I share them with coffee students, guests at Fika, event audiences, and the wider community. You can currently visit Fika in Victoria to see a selection of these photographs, exhibited from the coffee forests, in person.

Until now, I have personally paid for the flights, local transportation, accommodation, meals, photography, and time away from operating Fika. This has made the work possible on a small scale, but it limits how frequently I can return to coffee-growing regions, how thoroughly I can document what I encounter, and how many people the resulting stories can reach.

My current 70–200 mm lens is useful for field documentation and smaller prints, but photographing distant wildlife often requires significant cropping. The resulting images work well for postcards, teaching materials, and prints up to approximately letter size, but they do not consistently retain enough detail for larger gallery exhibitions. Access to longer-reach, exhibition-capable photography equipment would allow me to document wildlife more responsibly from a distance and produce larger, higher-quality public exhibitions.