Civette masquée

Masked Palm Civet is widely camera-trapped across its range and in many evergreen biomes it is amongst the more commonly recorded small carnivores (e.g. Holden 2006, Long and Minh 2006, Datta et al. 2008, Johnson et al. 2009, Mathai et al. 2010, Matsubayashi et al. 2011, Sathyakumar et al. 2011, Hedges et al. 2013, Gray et al. 2014b, McCarthy and Fuller 2014, Willcox et al. 2014: Table SOM3). Nonetheless, its semi-arboreal behaviour takes it out of the range of ground-level camera-traps some, perhaps much of the time. Thus, in several areas in both Myanmar and Thailand where significant camera-trapping effort did not photograph the species, it was found by other methods (Than Zaw et al. 2008, Chutipong et al. 2014). Similarly, in Hainan (China) it is never camera-trapped in contrast to the convincing local opinion that it is as common there as is Common Palm Civet (Bosco P.L. Chan per. comm. 2014). Its degree of arboreality hinders assessing its local status by camera-trapping. The species is perhaps less common where it has been heavily hunted for the commercial food trade in southern China and in parts of Viet Nam, but still remains widespread and locally common in these areas (Lau et al. 2010, M.W.N. Lau pers. comm. 2006, Bosco P.L. Chan pers. comm. 2014, D.H.A. Willcox pers. comm. 2014). Further north in China it is at least locally common and has been studied in landscapes comprising remnant forest patches mixed with agriculture (e.g. Wang and Fuller 2003, Zhou et al. 2008). The number of recent records in many parts of its range in, or in close proximity to, areas of heavy human activity suggest that its populations remain high within remaining habitat, including largely anthropogenic areas such as Hong Kong (Pei et al. 2010): here it lives even in suburban shrubby patches with groves of mainly exotic trees on retaining walls in residential areas (Bosco P.L. Chan per. comm. 2014). Although it readily uses non-forest habitats, at least in China, there seem to be no records within the southern part of its range far from forest. Thus, the extensive deforestation over much of its range in recent decades is likely to have caused population declines, which can be assumed to be continuing in areas still losing large areas of forest, such as Sumatra (McCarthy and Fuller 2014). Because in South-east Asia this is primarily a species of hill forest, where deforestation rates are much lower than in the level lowlands, its decline rate is likely to be less steep than that of lowland species. Hill forests are, however, still subject to widespread selective logging, and the response of the species to selective logging remains uncertain (see 'Habitats and ecology' section).