Group: Help fund research on Hose’s Civet

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/8/20/sarawak/6886795&sec=sarawak

Friday August 20, 2010

Group: Help fund research on Hose’s Civet

THE Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Malaysia has appealed to citizens and corporate bodies to help fund its research work on the Hose’s Civet, which is extremely special to Malaysian Borneo and Brunei.

The society’s assistant head of the Wildlife and Logging Unit, John Mathai, said the species could not be found anywhere else in the world, adding that this was a cause worth fighting for, and would be a very unique and significant opportunity for corporate social responsibility initiatives.

“We are ready do our part and rough it out in the jungles to save this creature,” he added.

He told StarMetro that WCS Malaysia had plans to further its research on the Hose’s Civet using camera traps and hair snares.

“From this, we hope to model the distribution of Hose’s Civet in relation to habitat characteristics, thereby understanding its habitat requirements and threats. This will allow conservation efforts to be more focussed,” he said.

The research would hopefully generate the first ever estimates of population size of the species and enable CWS Malaysia to understand dispersal patterns, thereby understanding the potential for recolonisation, he disclosed.

However, Mathai said: “To do proper science, we need substantial and sustained funding. We currently do not have this, and so we can only apply methods that do not generate substantial data.”

Mathai, who leads the team of researchers who obtained the images of the Hose’s Civet in the Selaan-Linau Forest Management Unit (FMU), said that no protected area was known to hold a large population of the species.

“Next to nothing is known about the habits and diet of the species in the wild. Nothing is known about its population, breeding cycle or dispersal patterns. It is a creature of complete mystery. Hence, conservation measures are impossible.”

According to Mathai, WCS Malaysia had 14 images of the Hose’s Civet so far from the Selaan-Linau FMU taken in a span of 18 months from 2004 and 2005.

The previous largest series of encounters from one locality was four specimens collected by Tom Harrisson in the Kelabit Highlands between 1945 and 1949.

Meanwhile, Mathai clarified that a photo accompanying the article titled “On the Hose’s civet trail” published in StarMetro on Thursday was that of the Otter Civet (Cynogale bennettii) and not a Hose’s Civet (Diplogale hosei).

He also said the photo was taken by a group of researchers from WWF Malaysia in Deramakot Forest Reserve, Sabah, and not from the Selaan-Linau FMU, Sarawak, as reported in the article.

Mathai explained that, though the Otter Civet was also a rare and little-known species, its range covered Borneo, Vietnam, West Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Hose’s Civet, on the other hand, is endemic to northern Borneo, and has only been recorded in Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei. It has not even been recorded in Kalimantan.