The conservation costs of commercial breeding of civet pets in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia’s Civet Lover clubs are urban and suburban social groups comprised of civet (sp. Viverridae) pet keeping enthusiasts. Civet Lover clubs operate regionally and nationally, with trends in civet pet keeping facilitated on social media. The commercial breeding of civets has arisen to supply demand. This research is a case study analysis of the most popular commercial civet farm operating on Instagram from 2016 to 2021. Data comprise all posts that featured civet copulations, births, and sales (n = 276). Species and morphological characteristics were recorded for each post. Common palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) accounted for 95.16% (n = 786) of civets observed in the sample. Of these, Bali (n = 103), Java (n = 8) and Borneo (n = 2) were identified by the business as civet origin locations, regions of Indonesia where wild harvesting and domestic trade of P. hermaphroditus is either heavily restricted or prohibited. Five new captive bred morphs were observed for this species: leucistic (n = 119), mosaic (n = 121), white tail-tip (n = 69), platinum (n = 17), and platinum mosaic (n = 6). Mosaic morphs were on sale for the highest known price at 20,000,000.00 IDR compared to 1,000,000 IDR for natural morphs. Results indicate that the creation of unique and economically valuable civet morphs is a driver of illegal harvesting and the cross breeding of civets from distinct populations could be a sign of hybridisation/introgression.