Considered among the rarest of Indian mammals, the mysterious Malabar civet (Viverra civettina) has proven a challenging subject to conservationists attempting to study its status and distribution in the Western Ghats. This report is an outcome of a two-year long conservation survey – funded by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India and implemented by the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) – conducted to establish the presence of this elusive viverrid in lowland Western Ghats in the south Indian states of Kerala and Karnataka.