Small Carnivore Conservation

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.

The journal receives a large number of papers that are essentially records or observations on non-threatened species that do not materially alter understanding of small carnivore conservation. The journal can publish these records, but they must formatted as short and concise record descriptions; there is no need for lengthy introductions on the e.g. global distribution of Common Palm Civet.