How to Use extirpate in a Sentence

extirpate

verb
  • The gray wolf is believed to have been extirpated from the state in the 1920s.
    Suzanne Espinosa Solis, SFChronicle.com, 15 Apr. 2020
  • In the Southern Ocean, blue whales were almost extirpated in the 1920s.
    National Geographic, 5 Apr. 2016
  • Wolves were extirpated from the state in the 1940s mainly because of their depredation of livestock.
    USA TODAY, 12 July 2019
  • Each species had been extirpated or nearly so over the last 150 years but in recent decades returned to robust numbers.
    Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 27 Sep. 2017
  • Wolves were extirpated from California in 1924, and are just now starting to enter the state again.
    Eduardo Medina, SFChronicle.com, 5 July 2019
  • The site notes that the red wolf was extirpated from Alabama — meaning it was destroyed or completely removed from the state.
    Nick Patterson, al, 26 Jan. 2023
  • The animals are native to Wisconsin, but were extirpated by the late 1800s due to overhunting and changes to their habitat.
    Chelsey Lewis, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9 Oct. 2017
  • The seals had been extirpated from New England by the early 1960s, largely a result of culling by commercial fishers.
    Jim Behnke, Scientific American, 2 July 2023
  • The modern left’s mission to extirpate sin from society is the product of a secular religion of the most austere sort.
    Gerard Baker, WSJ, 21 Dec. 2020
  • Now, by moving against the commission, Mr. Biden looks to extirpate classical roots.
    James Panero, WSJ, 26 May 2021
  • The bird is considered extirpated, or nearly extinct, in the Garden State.
    Frank Kummer, Philly.com, 2 May 2018
  • They were nearly extirpated from the wild in U.S. waters, hunted for their pelts or government bounties.
    Jackson Landers, Smithsonian, 26 Jan. 2017
  • They were nearly extirpated from the wild in U.S. waters, hunted for their pelts or government bounties.
    Jackson Landers, Smithsonian, 26 Jan. 2017
  • Over a century before the idea of extinction was accepted, those who extirpated the dodo did not keep detailed records of the bird’s decline.
    Brian Switek, WIRED, 12 Dec. 2011
  • But there’s one pesky thing that will be tough to extirpate: the idea of the individual as distinct from the tribe, and the idea that governments derive their consent from the governed, that the rights of the individual transcend time and place.
    James Lileks, National Review, 11 July 2019
  • Neandertals are finally expiring as a species in the face of the advance of modern humans, who marginalize and extirpate all those who came before.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 14 July 2010
  • In Indonesia, the V.O.C. eventually followed up the massacre of a people with an effort to extirpate a botanical species.
    Olufemi O. Taiwo, The New Yorker, 25 Oct. 2021
  • Brave nonconformists across Cuban civil society, whom the regime is determined to extirpate, are merely collateral damage in a wider war against the values of the West.
    Mary Anastasia O’Grady, WSJ, 12 June 2022
  • The researchers begin by extirpating some common myths.
    Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times, 3 Apr. 2018
  • The wolf is native to Wisconsin but was extirpated by the 1960s after decades of unregulated hunting and bounties.
    Paul A. Smith, Journal Sentinel, 29 Apr. 2023
  • The Ottomans did manage to extirpate the Armenian community from their lands.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 26 Sep. 2010
  • The animals are also making inroads into parts of western Oregon where they’ve been extirpated for decades, including a new pack in Lane and Douglas counties.
    oregonlive, 16 Apr. 2020
  • The Sonoran pronghorn was extirpated from its range in California by the 1950s due to overhunting, fencing and water source development.
    Jake Frederico, The Arizona Republic, 3 Mar. 2023
  • What frightens Californians most about the next four years is that, instead of trying to learn from their state’s successes, Trump could seek to extirpate the federal programs that even California needs to thrive.
    Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek, 23 Jan. 2017
  • The plain fact of the matter is that violent leftist revolutionaries of the kind that Salazar promised to extirpate in Portugal are nowhere to be seen on the American political landscape today.
    Cameron Hilditch, National Review, 12 Aug. 2021
  • The presence of wolves in Maine is hotly debated after they were extirpated from the Northeast due to centuries of bounties, habitat alteration and development.
    Ret Talbot, Discover Magazine, 14 Aug. 2023
  • Gray wolves are native to California, but they were extirpated from the state around the 1920s, possibly because of hunting and other human activities.
    Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The best solution, which states are grappling with but biologists would like to see, is to reintroduce rattlesnakes into areas where they have been extirpated, like has been done with the Florida panther or bald eagles.
    National Geographic, 26 June 2016
  • But habitat loss and unregulated hunting combined to extirpate the big animals by 1900.
    Tom Carpenter, Outdoor Life, 2 Mar. 2021
  • Wild turkeys were native to Wisconsin but extirpated in the 1800s through unregulated hunting and habitat loss.
    Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8 June 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'extirpate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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