Range Description

This species is endemic to the Western Ghats of India and has been recorded mostly in the coastal district of the Western Ghats, in southern India from Kanyakumariin the extreme south to as far as Wayanad, Coorg, and Honnavar in Karnataka in the north (Pocock, 1933, 1939; Corbet and Hill, 1992). There are only two reports of its occurrence in the higher elevation (>600 m) of the Western Ghats, in the High Wavy Mountains (Hutton, 1949) and possibly in Kudremukh (Karanth, 1986). The former is open to severe doubt. By the late 1960s, it was thought to be near extinction. From 1950 to 1990, there were only two possible records of this species, one in Kudremukh in Karnataka (Karanth, 1986) and the other in Tiruvella in Kerala (Kurup, 1989). After being listed as possibly extinct, skins of recently killed civets were obtained in Elayur, in the lowland Western Ghats, in Malappuram district, Kerala (Kurup, 1989) and near Nilambur (northern Kerala) (Ahsraf et al., 1993). Rai and Kumar (1993) report information of possible occurrence in Karnataka State.