Taxon distribution as listed in assessment
The status and distribution of the Honey Badger in the UAE is uncertain. Tracks were reported in the late 1940s between Liwa and the Sabkha Matti (Thesiger 1949). There have been two more recent reports of tracks: in 1991 between Liwa and Umm al Zummoul and 1992 in the Baynoonah area (Duckworth 1996, Drew and Tourenq 2005, Aspinall et al. 2005). The first definitive record in the UAE was in August 2005, when three specimens, two live and one dead, were recorded near Ruwais in western Abu Dhabi (Aspinall et al. 2005). This record appears to have been overlooked by Mallon and Budd (2011) and others. Tracks were seen in 2010 in Baynoonah, western Abu Dhabi. There are two reports from the Northern Emirates (G. Feulner, pers. comm. 2018): In the late 1990s or early 2000s, Jaap Wensvoort, then manager of a reserve north-east of Hatta, reported a sighting from an elevated viewpoint, of a 'waddling, black-and-white animal crossing the plain below'. The only reasonable candidate seems to be the Honey Badger. In 2016, a Dubai naturalist and photographer observed a Honey Badger feeding not long after dark beside the trash area at an informal picnic site above a dam on the western mountain front. The Honey Badger has an extensive global range in most of sub-Saharan Africa from South Africa north to southern Morocco and southwestern Algeria, and through Arabia, Iran and western Asia and Central Asia (Do Linh San et al. 2016).
History
Whilst Hornby (1996) listed this species as Critically Endangered, at that time the species' occurrence in the UAE was unconfirmed as only tracks had been reported in the 1940s and once in 1996. Since that time there has been a record of three specimens which confirms its presence, but nothing more is known. The backcasted 1996 assessment for this species is, therefore, Data Deficient.