Between 1996 and 2008 the population of Tasmanian devilsdropped some 60 percent because of a contagious cancer known as devil facial tumor disease. It continues to decimate populations of the species, which occurs only on the Australian island of Tasmania. There may be only 10,000 wild individuals remaining. Captive breeding of uninfected individuals has been instituted, and efforts have been made to develop a vaccine for the cancer, which is thought to have stemmed from mutated cells from a single specimen.
