Nilgiri Marten: Phantom of the Western Ghats

An unexpected visitor

It was a regular day at our home in Bokkapuram, an area at the base of the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu. My partner and I were having lunch on our veranda, looking towards the dense bamboo grove. This was our daily ritual. We enjoyed watching the usual suspects, spotted deer, wild boar, langur, go about their business. It was a hot, humid day; the afternoon lull had set in, both in our minds and in the wildlife around us. Then suddenly, both our eyes caught a movement beyond the deer, a short-legged, long-tailed, blackish animal bounding away in a distinct manner. It was the rare and elusive Nilgiri marten (Martes gwatkinsii). Until that day, it never occurred to us that martens may be found around our house. We watched it for a few hours, completely mesmerised, as it clambered and explored the high bamboo. It manoeuvred through the foliage with ease, found a secure spot, and watched us from high above. It seemed unfamiliar with its surroundings and eventually made its way towards the higher slopes, melting into the forest. We have never heard of another Nilgiri marten sighting again from that region.

What we know

We know very little about the Nilgiri marten as it is difficult to observe and has not been the focus of too many studies. Its IUCN status is “Vulnerable”. Martens prefer high sholas, grasslands, and mid-altitude evergreen forests of the Western Ghats. Their northernmost presence is recorded from the wet, evergreen forests near Sakleshpur in Karnataka state. Of the three marten species found in India, this is the largest and the only endemic marten. The Nilgiri marten’s northern relatives — the yellow-throated marten and the stone marten — are found in various habitats in the Himalayas and a large part of Southeast Asia and Eurasia, respectively.

Like most martens, Nilgiri martens look adorable, but they are predators and agile hunters with incredibly strong jaws. They’ve been known to prey on mouse deer, hare, birds, giant squirrels, bats and even monkeys. Remains of insects and seeds have been found in their scat, thus including them in the omnivorous category.

A never-ending search for the marten

There are frequent accounts of marten sightings from tea, coffee, and cardamom plantation workers around Valparai, Munnar, Coorg, and the Nilgiris, always in border montane and evergreen forest patches.

In the initial years of exploring the southern Western Ghats and Nilgiris, we would actively search for martens. During countless walks inside Pambadam Shola in Munnar, we scanned every potential crooked tree and wished every giant squirrel and macaque alarm call was marten-induced. We would relentlessly enquire with people who regularly walked those areas, including forest guards, estate workers, and view-point tea shop owners. Many had never seen the creature, and some had never even heard of it. Most people confuse it with the Malabar giant squirrel, and I don’t blame them since we have also been fooled multiple times. In Tamil, the Nilgiri marten is called “mara nai” or tree dog, but that moniker is often extended to giant squirrels and palm civets as well.

Interestingly, we also met a few individuals who had seen it, and they had surprisingly good phone photos and videos of the animal approaching them quite close. A forest guard at Pambadam Shola had a long video of a marten chasing a mouse deer right in front of the entry gate tea shop, sometimes even running around his feet to get to the little deer. Another interesting story was narrated by a coffee estate worker who had seen martens dig up rotting wood to feed on the beetle larvae inside. Once, I was told of a marten visiting a beekeeper’s hives in Coorg for honey (or larvae) regularly. These varied personal accounts confirm how little we know about this species. They follow no patterns or regular territorial habits (at least that we know of). This led us to accept that seeing a marten could only be a matter of persistent searching and a bit of being in the “right place at the right time”; in other words, serendipity or luck.

My friend Renjith Hadlee, one of the best-known naturalists from Munnar, has now had multiple sightings, but never during a planned effort. The animal was either spotted randomly on the roadside while driving or seen while guiding birders, who weren’t very interested in mammals. He is convinced that birders have the best luck when it comes to chancing upon martens, especially the ones who don’t carry cameras.

The secret life of a Nilgiri marten

The marten is a rather tricky mammal to write about, as there is very little known about it. The average length of sightings in one of the extensive studies was only about four minutes. There are probably fewer camera trap photographs of martens than the elusive pangolin. So many questions still linger in my mind about this animal. Why is their distribution restricted to parts of southern Karnataka and not further north? How large are their home ranges? Are their numbers growing or reducing? I wonder if martens were a common sight before the tea estates took over the sholas. The Western Ghats is one of the world’s eight biodiversity hotspots and has been well studied over the years, yet it is baffling how little we know about this significantly large and charismatic endemic mammal. Why is it that even locals who live near it don’t know of its existence? It is truly the ultimate phantom of the Western Ghats.

My one and only sighting of this enigmatic creature was under totally unexpected circumstances, but interestingly, in classic marten fashion. This wasn’t the end of my search; it was a starting point to find answers to my questions about Nilgiri martens. The search for the Nilgiri marten will be a constant endeavour. But above everything, I dream that one day I will see a pair in their natural habitat, perched on a tree in a misty shola forest.