Taz the obnoxious, fuzzy shrieking, growling Looney Tunes character has his own TV show and is probably more familiar to the average American audience than the real Tasmanian Devil which lives on the temperate, West-Virginia sized island off the south-west corner of Australia. Tasmanian devils are small carnivorous marsupials related to the Tasmanian tigers that went extinct in 1936. They got their name from some of the early European convict settlers who were often woken up at night by their demonic screeches. In fact, the devils were really just shy, nocturnal, sausage-dog sized scavengers fighting over a carcass. Today there are about 20,000 – 50,000 of them left in the wild and they are the symbol of the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service.

I was recently contacted by a Tasmanian biologist, Steven Smith, who is very worried about this characteristic marsupial whose populations are in freefall because they have developed one of only three recorded cancers that spread like a contagious disease from one animal to another. The disease manifests itself as hideous facial lesions and growths that kill the animal within just a few months of their first appearance. Since the first signs of the disease were reported in 1992, there has been a 53% reduction in sightings country-wide and the disease has spread almost entirely across the island. Given that the disease is so poorly understood, a decline like this may be sufficient justification to reclassify the animal on the IUCN list from its current status of Least Concern, to Endangered.

The biologists that I have spoken to about this problem are so worried about this iconic symbol of Tasmania that they have sent shipments of disease-free animals off to mainland Australia and zoos abroad to participate in captive-breeding programs as a “Project Ark” insurance policy so that there would be a genetically viable populations to use for re-introduction purposes should the devil go extinct on its homeland. Fortunately, because of Taz, the real Tasmanian devils have a built-in fan base, and with some creative support from major companies like Warner Brothers, there is some real potential to avert the potential extinction of the world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial, but more research to fully understand how the disease is transmitted is urgently needed. Let’s just hope that this disease can’t jump species like Avian Flu or Ebola.

Brian Gratwicke is regular contributor to DavidMixner.com and an expert in wildlife and environmental issues.