Stripe-backed Weasel probably lives mainly in evergreen forests in hills and mountains, but has been recorded from other biotopes including dense scrub, secondary forest, grassland and farmland (Abramov et al. 2008). Most records come from in or near larger extents of high elevation (1,000 m+) terrain. It sometimes occurs well below 1,000 m in such areas (down almost to sea-level in Viet Nam), but there are no records, except in Viet Nam, from lower elevations in areas away from high altitude terrain (Abramov et al. 2008). It is probably diurnal and mostly solitary. Conventional camera-trapping is not particularly efficient at finding it even when it is known by other methods to be present (Than Zaw et al. 2008, Chutipong et al. 2014).

Stripe-backed Weasel is found from Sikkim (India) east through southern China (Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces), North-east India and north and central South-east Asia to Viet Nam (Abramov et al. 2008). Formerly thought to be restricted in South-east Asia to the north and centre, a recent record from Thailand is from far to the south, near Kuiburi National Park at 12°06′N, 99°44′E (Chutipong et al. 2014). It presumably occurs also in Bhutan, although Abramov et al. (2008) traced no records from the country. As of late 2014, there are no records from Bangladesh (Hasan Rahman pers comm. 2014), although it seems likely to occur in the evergreen forests of the north-east. There are two old specimens catalogued as from ‘Nepal’ (i.e., west of the validated world range), but they probably did not come from within the boundaries of the modern country (Hinton and Fry 1923). Thapa (2014) listed the species for Nepal without caveat, but confirmed subsequently that he knows of no specific records from the country (S. Thapa pers. comm. 2014). This species has a wide recorded altitudinal range of 90 to 2,500 m (Abramov et al. 2008).

There are no obvious conservation needs for Stripe-backed Weasel. Habitat-driven decline rates are fairly low, given its presence in degraded and fragmented forests and the high proportion of its population in hill and mountain areas with relatively low rates of forest conversion. Moreover, except possibly for pelts in China, it is not a targeted quarry species (Abramov et al. 2008). It has been recorded in many protected areas across its range and it is likely that it occurs, as yet undetected, in many of those so far remaining little surveyed (Abramov et al. 2008, Chutipong et al. 2014). Many of these protected areas have little real protection from hunting and small-scale habitat loss and in the long term, the species's chief conservation concern is probably the risk of insufficient real security of declared protected areas. It is listed as Endangered on the China Red List (Wang and Xie 2004) and is protected in Thailand.