About the Journal
Small Carnivore Conservation is the peer-reviewed journal of the IUCN SSC Small Carnivore Specialist Group. The journal is open access and we do not charge any publication fees.
The journal’s focus is about:
- Ailuridae (red pandas)
- Eupleridae (the Malagasy carnivores)
- Herpestidae (mongooses, including the Meerkat)
- Mephitidae (stink badgers and skunks)
- Mustelidae (weasels, badgers, and their allies, except the otters – see below)
- Nandiniidae (African Palm-civet)
- Prionodontidae (linsangs)
- Procyonidae (coatis, raccoons and their allies)
- Viverridae (civets and genets, including the oyans or ‘African linsangs’)
It does not cover cats (Felidae), dogs (Canidae), or otters (Lutrinae, a subfamily of Mustelidae) as these taxa are covered by other IUCN SSC specialist groups and their journals. However, the journal does publish ‘by-catch’ data on these three taxa from camera-trapping, surveys and observations as part of a manuscript that is focused primarily on one (or more) of the nine small carnivore families listed above.
The majority of small carnivores are very poorly known and researched; anything that has the potential to inform small carnivore conservation will be considered for publication. Some examples include:
- basic observations of natural history;
- locality records, particularly from little-known species and/or little-known areas;
- survey results of animals in the wild and/or in trade;
- threat documentation, including of novel or potential threats;
- reviews of new or improved methods for detecting small carnivores;
- critical assessments or reviews of current methods;
- taxonomic and nomenclatural reviews;
- identification criteria reviews;
- museum holdings;
- insight from zoos, including the development of conservation breeding programmes;
- legal and policy aspects relevant to these animals, including changes to protected area status;
- lessons (positive and negative) learned from conservation programmes;
- whole- or part-range conservation status assessments of single or multiple species;
- academic research;
- and translations of relevant material from languages other than English.