‘Crossings’ explores the science of road ecology

Nearly 65 million kilometers of roadway crisscross the Earth — enough to encircle the planet more than 1,600 times — and that number will likely double by 2050. These roads have intruded into even the most remote corners of the world, and that has come at a cost: Vehicles are responsible for a staggering number of animal deaths. For instance, 1 million vertebrates are thought to die daily in collisions in the United States alone. Roads also kill indirectly, in part by fracturing migration routes and degrading pristine habitat.

In Crossings, journalist Ben Goldfarb delves into the burgeoning field of road ecology and introduces the impassioned, sometimes eccentric scientists who invite us to perceive our roads as animals do to better understand the ecological impacts. Goldfarb journeys alongside these researchers as they bike through Montana and wrestle anteaters in Brazil, squint at roadkill and rhapsodize about the design quirks that engineers can leverage to attract animals to safe overpasses and culverts. Road ecology, many of its proponents say, is a win-win: Building dedicated wildlife crossings, for example, is relatively cheap compared with other infrastructure projects, and minimizing collisions between drivers and animals preserves lives and lowers insurance premiums.

Science News spoke with Goldfarb about roads and how to minimize their harm. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

In Crossings, journalist Ben Goldfarb delves into the burgeoning field of road ecology and introduces the impassioned, sometimes eccentric scientists who invite us to perceive our roads as animals do to better understand the ecological impacts. Goldfarb journeys alongside these researchers as they bike through Montana and wrestle anteaters in Brazil, squint at roadkill and rhapsodize about the design quirks that engineers can leverage to attract animals to safe overpasses and culverts. Road ecology, many of its proponents say, is a win-win: Building dedicated wildlife crossings, for example, is relatively cheap compared with other infrastructure projects, and minimizing collisions between drivers and animals preserves lives and lowers insurance premiums.

Science News spoke with Goldfarb about roads and how to minimize their harm. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Goldfarb: The climate movement has evolved a lot over the last decade away from individual blaming and towards indicting larger corporate power structures. The same holds true in the world of road ecology. Most of us have had the experience of hitting wild animals. I’ve killed animals, unfortunately, and I always feel incredibly guilty about it and complicit in this car culture. But car culture is the product of this very intensive marketing campaign that the whole automotive industrial complex has waged.

Instead of blaming drivers for roadkill, the real answers are these larger systemic solutions. Maybe that’s modifying infrastructure to build more wildlife crossings to make highways permeable; maybe it means improved mass transit systems.

SN: You end the book talking about how roads have been leveraged as a tool of oppression against Black and brown communities. Why was it important to include that aspect?

Goldfarb: The parallels between the ways that roads impact ecological communities and the ways they impact human communities are striking. Highways are forces of division in both ecosystems and cities, and we humans fall victim to cars, just as wild animals do. But I also wanted to recognize that we’re not all harmed equally — roads, especially urban freeways, have been very deliberately weaponized against communities of color throughout the last century. And that’s still happening today.

SN: You quote an early U.S. Forest Service employee as saying “roads are such final and irretrievable facts,” yet the book argues that roads can be made into “visitors” in a landscape.

Goldfarb: We have the capacity to change them. The Forest Service, one of the world’s largest road managers, is decommissioning thousands of roads, recognizing that they still have harmful ecological effects. On the other end of the spectrum, you have places like Syracuse, where an urban freeway was punched through the middle of the city, deliberately wiping out a Black neighborhood. This old viaduct will be torn down in recognition of the disproportionate harms that it inflicted on people of color.

It’s remarkable to think that everything from tiny dirt roads to this enormous urban freeway are being unmade. Our roads aren’t necessarily fatal, permanent mistakes after all.