Balisaur

Greater Hog Badger populations have not been studied in sufficient detail for densities or trends to be known in any part of the range. Camera-trap encounter rates vary widely across its range: in some it is among the most commonly and widely photographed small carnivores, such as in Thailand (Chutipong et al. 2014) and Nakai–Nam Theun National Protected Area, Lao PDR (Coudrat et al. 2014), in others it is only rarely found if at all (e.g., modern Viet Nam: Willcox et al. 2014: Table SOM3).

At least two factors might produce this heterogeneous recording pattern: (i) natural variation in densities and (ii) human-induced declines proceeding at different rates across the range. Both are probably important. Past information is rarely precise enough to assess even the coarse population trend directly. However, judging by patterns in better documented hunting-sensitive groups of ground-dwelling mammals (e.g., wild cattle Bos, Leopard Panthera pardus, Sambar Rusa unicolor), it would be reasonable to expect human pressure to have depressed densities in Lao PDR and Viet Nam more than in Thailand and Cambodia. And this indeed seems to have happened. Recent camera-trapping has recorded the species in only very few areas in Viet Nam (Willcox et al. 2014: Table SOM3, Nguyen T. pers. comm. 2014); Roberton (2007) had already drawn attention to the surprising paucity of records in the country in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Lao PDR, by contrast, all published large-scale camera-trap surveys have found the species (Nam Et–Phou Louey NPA, Johnson et al. 2009; Nakai–Nam Theun NPA, Coudrat et al. 2014; Xe Sap NPA, Gray et al. 2014b), indicating a healthier status than in Vietnam (as is typical for hunting-sensitive species). The three camera-trap survey areas are likely to hold amongst the least-depleted large mammal faunas in Lao PDR. All are in rugged mountainous areas and indeed all post-1990 Lao records of Hog Badger come from hill and montane areas; there has been none from the plains. This pattern, making due allowance for the distribution of survey effort, was already apparent in the pre-camera-trapping era by 1999, based on direct sightings and records of dead animals or their parts (Duckworth et al. 1999). By contrast, this species is commonly recorded at low altitudes, including in plains landscapes, of Thailand and Cambodia (Royan 2010, Gray et al. 2014a, Chutipong et al. 2014) and it is common in similar lowland terrain in Kaziranga NP, Assam (Choudhury 2013). This suggests strongly that the absence of recent Lao records from such terrain (where hunting is more efficient than in rugged terrain, meaning that hunting-sensitive species across a range of vertebrate taxa tend to have declined faster there) reflects steep declines (and plausibly widespread extirpation) there.

The occurrence in Myanmar is also patchy without obvious natural explanation (Than Zaw et al. 2008); thus far, the pattern of records has not been compared closely with those of species known to be sensitive to hunting. In Cambodia, while it has been recorded relatively commonly in some areas such as parts of the north-east (Gray et al. 2014a), in the 'northern plains', west of the Mekong, it was not recorded in 6,000 camera-trap nights of survey in the 2012-2013 and 2013–2014 dry seasons, and the most recent record there seems to have been in 2001 (D. H. A. Willcox pers. comm. 2014). Thus area abuts Lao PDR and this apparent range retreat corroborates the suggestion that it has been hunted out from such habitat in Lao PDR. In Thailand, it seems to remain generally common with no large landscapes of (semi-) natural habitat lacking records (when patterns in survey effort are allowed for) (Chutipong et al. 2014). In North-east India the genus, although widespread, is generally not common (Choudhury 2013). The population status in its Chinese range (part of Yunnan province) seems poorly known, even at the level of genus.