Since European settlement, over 100 species have been lost here. These include plants and animals that are extinct and extirpated, and species that are considered historic (no one has seen them in Canada for a long time). The number of lost species varies between different regions of the country. In the Great Lakes region of southern Ontario, there are extinct species (passenger pigeon), extirpated species (paddlefish) and historic species (Eskimo curlew). There are also species that have vanished from this landscape but still exist elsewhere in Canada. This includes large carnivores, such as black bear and cougar, and also plants and smaller wildlife, such as white prairie-clover, spring salamander and Melissa blue butterfly.
Over a century ago, many of our game and fur-bearing animals, such as pronghorn, beaver and marten, had vanished from huge areas of Canada. Many migratory birds were becoming rare. When I was kid in the late 1970s, I had posters of peregrine falcons and American white pelicans on my wall. Their populations had drastically declined, in part, because of the pesticide DDT. DDT would accumulate in these birds and cause the shells of their eggs to thin and crack. Without new generations of these birds being born, their populations were declining. When DDT was mostly phased out by the mid 1970s, populations of these birds recovered.
Source: The Hamilton Spectator,,June 4, 2018