Talk:Local extinction

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Extinction Mid‑importance This article is a part of WikiProject Extinction, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource on extinction and extinct organisms. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.ExtinctionWikipedia:WikiProject ExtinctionTemplate:WikiProject ExtinctionExtinction Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 17 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Unwisedragon838. Peer reviewers: AustinScott99, Brprate.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

I redirected extirpation to extinction a while ago. I suggest, while not feeling particularly strongly about the matter, that doing so is a benefit to the reader. The reasoning is not only that the article was basically a dictionary definition with a couple of U.S. wolf examples, but also that there is, in the end, not a lot to explore in the nature of extirpation that would be out of place at the extinction article, which provides a lot of context. Reintroduction of species is the only issue that comes to mind that probably doesn't deserve a lot of space at extinction, and if someone wrote up a solid encyclopedic summary of the issue there, I'd say that would be the time to split out a new article devoted to extirpation. Jkelly 17:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

Orenburg1, what is it that needs clarification in the first sentence? --Paul_012 (talk) 01:26, 15 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

I am unsure as to the use of 'extirpate' to mean 'local extinction'.

The OED defines extirpate as 'eradicate or destroy completely'. Merriam-Webster defines extirpate as 'to destroy completely: wipe out: to :pull up by the root:...to cut out by surgery'.

Is there a biological definition or usage that means 'local extinction' (and a ref)? I had a look but couldn't find one.

Regards.Orenburg1 (talk) 17:23, 15 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

Extirpated is widely used to mean locally extinct in biological contexts. The noun form extirpation is somewhat less frequently used, I think, but see this textbook definition for an example. Searching on the IUCN website reveals plenty of usage—it is indeed a widely understood term in biology. --Paul_012 (talk) 01:35, 18 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Local extinction. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070311042359/http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb310/lecture-notes/checkerspot/node4.html to http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb310/lecture-notes/checkerspot/node4.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:09, 9 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

Extinction means there are no more, anywhere, and no possibility of restoration. In the situation where there are no more in some locality (for any arbitrary definition of local!) but there are some somewhere else, that's not extinction.

The article should explain this term for what it is: an emotional term expressing alarm, dismay, fear, nostalgia, paranoia, etc. It's use contributes nothing to logical or scientific thought. Richard J Kinch (talk) 08:40, 5 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

I agree that the article would be better placed at "Extirpation" instead. Even as a section within "Extinct" would be better than the incorrectly formed subject title as it currently exists. Loopy30 (talk) 02:10, 19 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

Rkinch, Loopy30, Bahudhara, Ddum5347, Pvmoutside, Hyperik, Craigthebirder , MeegsC - please ping any others in related projects who may be interested in this discussion.

See discussion at Talk:List of mammals of South Australia, from which I will copy first the OED definition obtained by William Harris:

The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Volume V, Dvanda-Follis

p520 Extinct see Extinguish

p603-606 Extirp 1. to root up (plants) 2. to root out, exterminate (a family, sect, or nation)

p603-606 Extirpate 1. to clear of stumps. 2. to pull or pluck out by the roots; to root up, destroy, or remove root and branch (a tree, plant) 3. to root out, exterminate, or completely destroy (a class, sect, or nation); to kill off, and render extinct (a species of animal or plant) 4. to root out, eradicate (an immaterial thing e.g. heresy, vice etc.)

p603-606 Extirpator one who, or that which, extirpates.

And second, a condensed version of one of my comments from that page:

Biological definitions: extirpation is defined as meaning "local extinction" in these definitions: Encylopedia.com, Biology dictionary, and some North American usage: [1], [2], [3]. However, Biology online gives definitions akin to standard English dictionary ones, and it does not it appear at all in The Oxford Dictionary of Biology (8th ed.). The latter defines Extinction as "The irreversible condition of a species or other group of organisms of having no living representatives in the wild, which follows the death of the last surviving individual of that species or group. Extinction may occur on a local or global level; it can result from various human activities, including the destruction of habitats or the overexploitation of species that are hunted or harvested as a resource...". (My italics.)

2015 paper by a group of scientists and academics in Oklahoma - see Concluding Remarks. "It is clear that use of extinction versus extirpation has changed over time and that the public has a different sense of what extinction means relative to how many conservation biologists use the term."

IMO, we could add improved explanation to this article, citing the above paper, the general dictionary usage per the OED meanings, and the Oxford Dictionary of Biology, as the basis of preferring the term "local extinction" in Wikipedia, bearing in mind that Extirpation (+ related forms) redirect to this page, so it needs mention. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 03:42, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

many of the regional bird lists use the word extirpated rather than local extinction. Avibase and the American Ornithological Society use the term and our lists follow as they are the main references for the lists....Pvmoutside (talk) 14:35, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Sources that use "extirpation" as a synonym: [4][5][6][7][8] [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Functional traits and prior abundance explain native plant extirpation in a fragmented woodland landscape Long live the King River Perchlet (Nannatherina balstoni) Can the invasive European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) assume the soil engineering role of locally-extinct natives? Monitoring the Abundance of Wild and Reintroduced Bilby Populations These were added by @Hyperik:, so full credit goes to him, I'm just reposting them Ddum5347 (talk) 15:53, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

(I'm not a "him". No biggie, but it's best to default to "they/them" when you're not sure. Thanks for the ping!) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:16, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Sorry!!! I was not aware. Ddum5347 (talk) 18:23, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Some others to add to Ddum5347's list of organisations which use "extirpation" rather than "local extinction" include: BirdLife International, the American Ornithological Society, the American Society of Mammalogists (they use both, actually, though "local extinction" only very rarely), and the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. Page 8 in the latter's newsletter has an interesting explanation of how the two differ. MeegsC (talk) 17:10, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Providentially, I recently queried a friend who's a PhD ornithologist and museum curator about how he uses "extirpated". He uses it to mean "locally extinct". Craigthebirder (talk) 17:27, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Excellent links, @MeegsC:. I also have another article that uses the word: [17] Ddum5347 (talk) 17:38, 10 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

I don't think the issue is how scientists use the word extirpation, or that it is in scientific literature a synonym (or even more correct terminology) for locally extinct (and btw I also noticed that it is tautologically expressed as "locally extirpated", or interchangeably used, within several articles), but what is in common usage for most of the Wikipedia readership. For me, the strongest arguments for using "local extinction" in favour of "extirpation" are (a) Table 3 in that article I posted, which shows the steep rise in the term "local extinction" towards 2000, at the same times as decline in the use of "extirpation", and secondly, the The Oxford Dictionary of Biology (8th ed.), which uses local extinction. And of course there's the current naming of this article. For the non-biologist (i.e. most of our readers), local extinction has a clearer meaning, is commonly used by news articles on the topic, and while it does no harm (and potentially provides further education) to provide both, using "extirpation" as a substitute with no additional explanation does more harm than good. This article could provide some of this discussion in a Terminology section. Looking at page views, this one hovers in the 400-600 range, while the Extirpation redirect range is 20-40. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 00:54, 13 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

It's not about which is more used, it's just establishing the fact that they're synonymous. Ddum5347 (talk) 18:21, 30 March 2021 (UTC)\\Reply

Re how the terms are used and how they are not synonymous, here's a very recent quote that illustrates my point that "extirpated" is actually the more emotionally loaded term, from the website of the Institute for the Study of War:

Russian religious persecutions are likely also part of an ongoing Russian cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at extirpating the idea of an independent Ukrainian nationality or Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Here "extirpated" is meant to convey deliberate human action, whereas "locally extinct" is a neutral term that a species that previously existed in an area is now absent, without implying any particular cause or agency for the absence. Bahudhara (talk) 14:40, 17 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

despite this, we should use the historical term for local extinction, extirpated as most sources use it instead of local extinction per say. I suggest we have a vote on if we should re-move this back to the original page PhilovGraves (talk) 01:57, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 12 January 2026 and 7 May 2026. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): RonaldoSui123 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Jacob follower of JC (talk) 22:03, 14 April 2026 (UTC)Reply