Not every story about endangered species is horrible. Sometimes there's some good news mixed in with the bad. Although none of these stories is worth dancing in the streets over, each nonetheless merits at least a little bit of celebration.

Tasmanian devil DNA
Scientist from Penn State University and other institutions have completed sequencing the genome of two Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii), research, which they hope could help lead to the development of a method to protect the species from the deadly, contagious cancer known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD). The devils sequenced both had DFTD, but one, a male named Cedric, had famously shown resistance to two different strains of the virus before dying from a third. Tasmanian devils already show a very low genetic diversity (something the team confirmed by analyzing some genetic markers from 175 other devils from around the island), so it is hoped that this research can help conservation teams to protect animals that might also show resistance to some of the DFTD strains. More than 70 percent of Tasmanian devils have died of DFTD since it was first observed a little more than 10 years ago.

The thick, waterproof fur that once made the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) a valuable target for trappers may soon present another danger for the unique mammal: Australia could soon end up being too hot for the species to survive.

Platypus fur is so warm and watertight that it insulates the semiaquatic animals from virtually all heat loss—an important function, because platypus spend up to 10 hours a day in 0 degree Celsius streams and rivers. But this evolutionary advantage puts the species at a disadvantage as climate change heats things up in Australia. Research published online this week in Global Change Biology predicts that more than 30 percent of current platypus habitat will become too warm for the species by 2070.

According to the Web site Climate Change in Australia, models show a surface temperature rise of up to 5 degrees Celsius by 2070 in the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, where platypus are found.

Coco the Hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), one of the last males of his species in Paraguay, has had a rough start. Since his birth nine years ago he has been captured from the wild by illegal parrot traders, rescued, placed into Paraguay's Asunción Zoo, and then stolen from there—a crime that turned him into such a media celebrity that the thieves could not sell him and decided to set him free.

Now he's back at Asunción Zoo and looking for a mate. Too bad there aren't any available females anywhere in the vicinity.

The population of Hyacinth macaws, the world's largest flying parrots, has been hit hard in the past 30 years. Highly valued in the pet trade, tens of thousands of the birds have been taken illegally from the wild, and their habitat has also been lost to cattle ranches and hydroelectric power. Now few are left and finding mates to keep them breeding in captivity is a continual challenge.

Hyacinth macaws mate for life, so finding the right mate for Coco will be a challenge. Even if a mate is found, the next challenge will be getting the pair to reproduce. Zoo veterinarian Alex Lucas Spadetti told China's NTD Television, "Reproduction in captivity is very complicated. There are some factors that make it difficult, especially stress and the individual behavior of each animal.... We have to be lucky enough to find animals that adapt here and that want to be with each other as a couple."

The latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species includes an all-too-rare victory: The Arabian Oryx (Oryx leucoryx) has been upgraded from the Endangered category to Vulnerable. This is quite an achievement, because the species was extinct in the wild just a few decades ago. The last wild Arabian Oryx was shot in 1972. Since that time, intense conservation and re-introduction efforts have increased the species's wild population to 1,000 individuals.

This is the first time that a species once listed as Extinct in the Wild has been upgraded past the Endangered category (where the Oryx has been listed since 1986) all the way to Vulnerable.

Once present throughout the Middle East, the Arabian Oryx was overhunted in the 19th and 20th centuries until the only animals that remained were in zoos. Following captive breeding, re-introductions started in Oman in 1982. A brief period of poaching from 1996 to 1999 resulted in more than 200 Oryx deaths before the remaining animals in that country were placed in protective pens. The species was later re-introduced in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, where they have fared well.

The rising and often illegal trade in bushmeat—wild-caught animals, often threatened species such as primates, birds and elephants—threatens African biodiversity and could drive numerous species into extinction. Finding replacements for that trade could solve the need for both income and subsistence in many African communities. The answer, according to experts speaking at a meeting held in Nairobi this week, could include promoting beekeeping and farming jumbo-size African rodents known as cane rats (two species of the genus Thryonomys) for food. Representatives from 43 governments, United Nations agencies and other groups attended the meeting, which was organized by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), along with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to discuss issues the bushmeat trade, law enforcement and related issues.

The already rare Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides asiaeorientalis) faces an 80 percent drop in its population over the next 30 years, according to research by the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Currently, around 1,000 of the freshwater porpoises live in China's Yangtze River and its surrounding lakes, down from 2,700 in 1991 and 2,000 in the year 2000. That number continues to drop 6.4 percent a year, according to Wang Ding, principal investigator for the Institute, who told the Xinhua News Agency, "The next 10 years will be a critical period for the conservation of this species."

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, "porpoise habitat in the Yangtze has been degraded by water development, including the Gezhouba and Three Gorges dams and about 1,300 smaller dams in tributaries." The river is also heavily polluted by sewage and industrial runoff, according to the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) 2007 report, World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk. A 2008 study, also by Wang Ding, found that many finless dolphins were dying from exposure to mercury, insecticides, polychlorinated biphenyls and other pollutants.

All things to nothingness descend,
Grow old and die and meet their end...
Nor long shall any name resound
Beyond the grave, unless 't be found
In some clerk's book, it is the pen
Gives immortality to men

...and rhinos

The Norman poet Master Wace wrote those words (well, all but the last line) in the 12th century, and I have long taken his message to heart. It's a writer's job to tell the stories that won't otherwise be told, and in my case that often involves telling stories about the many endangered species that are quickly and silently slipping away from us.

I first wrote about the northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) in 1989 for a college economics paper about the illegal ivory trade, an assignment that kick-started my lifelong interest in endangered species. At the time, there were maybe only a few dozen of these animals left, the rest having been slaughtered over the course of the 20th century for their valuable horns that many Asian people still—quite erroneously—believe can cure a variety of diseases as well as improve male virility.

More than 30 years after 50 critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi) died of suspected algal toxic poisoning, the presence of ciguatoxins in living seals has finally been confirmed through a new, noninvasive test.

Ciguatoxins are produced by dinoflagellates, which live near coral and seaweed. The dinoflagellates are eaten by small fish, which are fed on by larger fish that are in turn consumed by predators such as seals and humans. Ingesting ciguatoxins produces an illness known as ciguatera, which produces gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms.

Unfortunately, ciguatoxins have not historically been easy to detect. Two of the 50 seals killed in 1978 tested positive for the neurotoxins using a method called mouse bioassay, where cultures were placed into live mice to see how they reacted. But mouse bioassay has more recently been criticized as not being effective in detecting algal toxins, and its practice has since been phased out in many places such as France, which started using chemical methods to detect the presence of toxins in oysters in 2010.

One year after a mysterious epidemic wiped out 12,000 critically endangered saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) in Kazakhstan, the ailment has struck there again, this time killing more than 400 animals.

Kazakhstan Today reports that 442 saiga antelope—including 360 does and 82 calves—were found dead in May. Like a year ago, they fell victim to pasteurellosis, an infection that afflicts the lungs.

But what caused the infection? West Kazakhstan regional governor Baktykozha Izmukhambetov told a cabinet meeting on May 31 that "some sort of poisoning from the flora, which is to say from the grass, is taking place." (Translation via Eurasianet.org)

Around the world, frogs and other amphibians are disappearing due to habitat loss, climate change, pollution and the deadly chytrid fungus, which has already driven a few dozen species into extinction. But with critical information on many species still lacking, scientists can only go so far when trying to help save those in crisis.

To help save the 6,813 known species of amphibians (and those that haven't been identified by science yet), the Web site iNaturalist.org this week launched what it has dubbed the Global Amphibian Blitz, a citizen science–social networking drive to gather information on amphibians around the world.