Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the NYPL's 2024 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism
Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award in Nonfiction
A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 and an Editors' Choice • A Science News Favorite Book of 2023 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2023 • A Smithsonian Staff Favorite of 2023 • A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 • A Booklist Top 10 Book on the Environment & Sustainability for 2024
An eye-opening account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager.
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 U.S. 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.
Today, as our planet’s road network continues to grow exponentially, the science of road ecology has become increasingly vital. Written with passion and curiosity, Crossings is a sweeping, spirited, and timely investigation into how humans have altered the natural world—and how we can create a better future for all living beings.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this captivating outing, science writer Goldfarb (Eager) explores the negative impact roads have on wildlife. Discussing the danger vehicle collisions pose to animals, he notes that 10,000 garter snakes were fatally hit in one season in Manitoba and that deer need intervals of approximately a minute or longer between passing cars to safely cross. Other harms are less obvious; the difficulty of traversing roadways leads to genetically inbred clusters ("A flightless European beetle disperses so feebly that biologists once found a genetically distinct population encircled by a highway exit loop"), and noise can disrupt ecological checks and balances (chaffinches in Portugal's oak woodlands avoid loud streets, "allowing unchecked insects to kill roadside trees"). Profiles of individuals working on mitigation strategies are as enlightening as they are encouraging. Among them, Goldfarb highlights biologist Tony Clevenger's research confirming the effectiveness of wildlife overpasses for enabling grizzly bear populations in Alberta's Banff National Park to intermingle and ecologist Sarah Perkins's efforts with Project Splatter to learn more about animal movement patterns by soliciting civilians to report roadkill. Humor leavens the frequently grim subject matter, as when Goldfarb notes that a plan to reduce Dall sheep's anxiety around vehicles in Denali National Park "runs 428 turgid pages and reliably cures insomnia." This one's a winner. Photos.
