23 species to be declared extinct, including ivory-billed woodpecker, Bachman's warbler and eight mussels

Bachman's warbler (Whatbird.com)

Ivory-billed woodpecker (Getty Images)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Wednesday that 23 species should be declared extinct and taken off the endangered species list. The delisting would include:

• The ivory-billed woodpecker, one of North America's largest woodpeckers, which briefly brought tourists trying to find it in rural Arkansas.
• Bachman's warbler, a songbird that once lived in the Southeast but fell prey to habitat destruction.
• The San Marcos gambusia, a tiny fish in Central Texas killed off from dry weather, pesticide runoff, and factory pollution.
• A catfish species native to Ohio, thought to be highly intolerant of water pollution.
• Eight freshwater mussels. It's not known why they went extinct, but freshwater mussels are among the most-endangered species in North America, possibly because of habitat destruction or disease.
• Eight Hawaiian bird species due to invasive predators.

"Many of them were likely extinct, or almost so, by the time the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, officials and advocates said, so perhaps no amount of conservation would have been able to save them," Catrin Einhorn reports for The New York Times. However, "without conservation, scientists say, many more species would have disappeared. Eleven species have been declared extinct since the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973, but 48 have recovered enough to be listed as threatened rather than endangered, and 54 species were removed from the list altogether.

The announcement offers a possible "glimpse of the future. It comes amid a worsening global biodiversity crisis that threatens a million species with extinction, many within decades," Einhorn reports. "Human activities like farming, logging, mining and damming take habitat from animals and pollute much of what’s left. People poach and overfish. Climate change adds new peril."

Starting today, FWS will accept public comments on the proposal for 60 days before making a final ruling.