Owston's Civet.

Pu Mat National Park is considered to be one of the last remaining strongholds for Owston’s civet based on habitat quality, confirmed presence, and high levels of conservation investment. However, the park is not evenly protected; most effort has been directed towards Khe Choang due to its recorded occurrence of Owston’s civets, Sunda pangolins, and other globally threatened species. Other localities in the park may require evidence of the species’ occurrence to encourage additional pressure by anti-poaching patrols. While targeted camera-traps have only been set in the Khe Choang, camera trapping installations in other suitable locations inside the park may reveal the species’s presence in other locations and establish wider, and more effectively focused patrol coverage.

By applying the SMART anti-poaching framework since 2018, government rangers and SVW’s anti-poaching teams in Pu Mat have become more effective in law enforcement and aiding conservation planning while also establishing Pu Mat as a safe space for wildlife recovery. We want to social research of hunting behaviours and local ecological knowledge of the species, camera-trap data, and SMART anti-poaching data, we could identify links between species occupation and hunting, thereby improve planning for patrols and protection within the national park as well as our chances to recover and prevent the extinction of the Owston’s civet.

Header: Pu Mat National Park from above. © Nguyen Huu Trung.