Belette de Colombie

No information regarding population size, density or trend is known for the species. Recent efforts to record the species in six potential localities within its range (two near two previously known localities) failed to detect it (Ramírez-Chaves and Patterson 2014). At the other three of the five known localities, natural habitat was severely transformed and fragmented.

Schreiber et al. (1989) noted that it is among the least-recorded carnivores in South America, and assumed this likely to reflect a genuine great rarity. Considering the species is difficult to identify even in the hand, it was suggested that it might be more represented in collections than previously thought; however, a recent review of most collections with mammal specimens from this species's range corroborated the rarity of the species in collections (Ramírez-Chaves et al. 2012). The rarity of sight and other non-specimen records cannot be taken as evidence of the species's abundance: it cannot, on current knowledge, be safely identified except in the hand. Without this ability to generate sight records, it will remain a labour-intensive challenge to determine the species's status: the perceived distribution and conservation status of two forest weasels of Indochina, Stripe-backed Weasel M. strigidorsa and Yellow-bellied Weasel M. kathiah, have been completely changed by birders' sight-records, often photographically documented, backed up by road-kills in areas where tourist roads have penetrated montane forest and bring in large numbers of nature-aware tourists (Abramov et al. 2008, Supparatvikorn et al. 2012). For these two latter species, and a third South-east Asian congener, Malay Weasel M. nudipes, examination of recording patterns in areas where multiple methods are used show that camera-trapping is very poor at detecting them, and even when these species are recorded by formal survey or research activities, it is usually incidentally outside the structured methodology; a remarkable number of records come from observers taking mid-day baths in forest streams (Duckworth et al. 2006, Abramov et al. 2008, Supparatvikorn et al. 2012). Such options are greatly reduced for Colombian Weasel: road-kills and animals retained by villagers (perhaps killed in retribution for perceived livestock losses) are the only plausible modes of generating incidental records where the confident identification to species can be upheld.

The area of suitable habitat (as the extent of natural habitat remaining within the known Extent of Occurrence, and within the altitude band of 1,500-2,700 m a.s.l., within which all records lie) was assessed as about 5,600 km² (J.F. González-Maya pers. comm. 2015). A density of one full-grown animal per 2.8 km² sounds credible for a forest weasel for which all evidence suggests the high likelihood of living at low densities: this would give 2,000 animals. Assuming about two-thirds of the population comprises mature individuals, the total global number of mature individuals would be about 1,350. The range is sufficiently extensive to make it highly likely that no one subpopulation holds over 1,000 mature individuals.