Civet Working Group Members Call

As part of our capacity building efforts, the Civet Working Group seeks to recruit more range country members.  

The Civet Working Group is hosted by the IUCN SSC Small Carnivore Specialist Group in partnership with The Civet Project Foundation. The working group's mission is to enhance scientific understanding of Viverrid species and to promote human-viverrid coexistence.

Inclusivity, diversity and collaboration are fundamental values of the Civet Working Group and these values feed into all that we do. Each of our three sub-groups (‘Education for Human-Viverrid Coexistence’ ; ‘Taxonomy & Red Listings’ ;  ‘Mapping & Distribution’) operate in such a way as to involve and benefit people who live alongside, interact with, or come into conflict with viverrid species.

Overall, our work seeks to include the perspectives of interest-holders within civet range countries. To strengthen our capacity in this area, we are seeking to appoint additional range country members to the Civet Working Group.

Our current focuses include, but are not limited to:

• Red Listing assessments for common palm civet (splitting into 3 species) and common genet (splitting into 2 species).

• Prioritising re-assessments for Data Deficient and Near Threatened viverrid species.

• Developing a global education campaign for World Civet Day under the thematic banner of ‘One Health, One Welfare, Once Community’

• Supporting early career conservationists to conduct research projects using our Night Roamers iNaturalist database.

As much of our current focus is on red listings, we are keen to work with members with local knowledge of species threats who are in tune with the situation in their region (e.g. regional mammal declines). Whilst no actions are imminent, we are also very interested to work with members from India so that we can best understand the cultural contexts surrounding the Malabar civet.

If you are from a viverrid range country and would like to join our working group please email . Dr Jes Hooper: jes@thecivetproject.com. Group related queries to be directed to the same email address.