Crossings
How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
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Crossings
Buy Now for $27.83
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Narrated by:
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Malcolm Hillgartner
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Written by:
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Ben Goldfarb
About this listen
Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they're practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. A million animals are killed by cars each day in the US alone, but as the new science of road ecology shows, the harms of highways extend far beyond roadkill. Creatures from antelope to salmon are losing their ability to migrate in search of food and mates; invasive plants hitch rides in tire treads; road salt contaminates lakes and rivers; and the very noise of traffic chases songbirds from vast swaths of habitat.
Yet road ecologists are also seeking to blunt the destruction through innovative solutions. Goldfarb meets with conservationists building bridges for California's mountain lions and tunnels for English toads, engineers deconstructing the labyrinth of logging roads that web national forests, animal rehabbers caring for Tasmania's car-orphaned wallabies, and community organizers working to undo the havoc highways have wreaked upon American cities.
©2023 Ben Goldfarb (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksAs both a conservative and an environmentalist, this is the type of literature that gives me a lot to chew on, the challenging relationship between the nature that needs to be protected and the roadways which very legitimately carry significant cultural value and symbolically represent a highly egalitarian expression of freedom (especially the logging roads that Goldfrab warns against).and from a political, and frankly partisan perspective (so take this with a grain of salt) I thought some of the authors ideas and insinuations in support of anti-developmentalism in the latter half of the book were largely unhelpful. for example, Western progressives finger wagging at developing nations for wanting to build the same infrastructure that we enjoy makes for a tiresome and sanctimonious read (I think Goldfarb might not feel the same way about the tsunami chapter if we was a rural south American who could access markets and hospitals if only he had a highway).
My only other criticism would be that there is a pessimism in the literature that is typical of these types of ecology focused literatures. I was expecting the literature to read more like a discussion of how roadways have changed ecology, as the title suggested, rather than how roads were just generally bad for ecology. A more nuanced take essentially. Granted, on the whole, roads are not good for ecology, but there are interesting discussions to be had in examining some of the few positives. Goldfarb touched only briefly on some of these wins but couched them deep in negatives and qualifiers. for example he does have a chapter on milkweed in road shoulders. the chapter talks about how road ditches can provide butterfly habitat but then retreats to saying its still bad because of butterfly road casualties. Fair enough, but this could have more broadly been a discussion of how roadside ditches have largely become the largest contiguous system of protected grassland habitat in the world. considering that grassland is some of the hardest habitat to protect, owing to its desirability to develop, this is not nothing, there is a bigger picture here, however this perhaps didn't fit the doomerism narrative well enough to warrant a more fulsome inventory of roadways place in ecology.
Still, on the whole, a very good book, and worth a read for anyone interested in the Anthropocenes many impacts on our natural world.
Interesting overview of the black snake
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Crossings is an amazing followup to the author's first book, Eager. Much like in Ben Goldfarbs previous outing, Ben is able to weave a tale that incorporates his personal experiences with those of leading scientists in the field. His ability to incorporate decades of work and the personality of some of the Western hemispheres leading road ecology scientists into a novel that can be understood from anyone from enthusiast to scientist is a feat in itself.
As an ecologist myself I learned a lot about a discipline that I am trying hard not to be obsessed about.
I can't wait for Ben's next book.
Another banger from an excellent author!
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