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  • Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb
  • David A. Bainbridge (bio)
Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
Ben Goldfarb. 2023. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, $30 USD Hardcover. ISBN: 978-1-324-00589-6. 370 pages.

Every ecologist, ornithologist, herpetologist and zoologist should seek out this new book. Ben Goldfarb has provided a remarkable look at the science, politics and emotion of Road Ecology. This book provides an excellent overview of this emerging field of research. Goldfarb exposes the horrific impact roads have when they are designed and built without due diligence. This analysis should help shape both policy and practice. It will also be useful in classrooms and for public outreach, helping ecologists explain why crossing roads is so deadly.

Local extinction is a real threat for so many species whose individuals want to cross a road but never make it. The numbers are chilling. Collisions with wildlife in the U.S. injure 59,000 people and kill more than 400 people a year. The death toll has apparently leveled off, but monitoring and data are weak. Millions of animals, birds, herpetiles and fish are killed by cars and road impacts. When Interstate 84 in Idaho opened in 1969, white-tailed deer wouldn’t cross, and their migration route was blocked. Deer stacked up, starved and died. The herd dropped from a healthy 2,000 to 800 starvelings. Locals called it the Berlin Wall for Wildlife. State Farm (2023) reported 1,288,714 collisions with deer. Montana led the way, with 1 in 53 drivers experiencing a collision with a deer every year. This risk analysis was made vividly personal when I recalled a drive I did from Banff, Alberta, south into Montana on Rt. 95 in the fall, where the blood-spattered road had deer carcass after deer carcass for mile after mile. It was appalling. Goldfarb found many other horror stories around the world, including in Tasmania, the “Road Kill Capital of the World.”

During Goldfarb’s travels researching the book, he helped in surveys, counted the dead, and cherished the “carers”—scientists and volunteers who work to make roads a little less deadly. There are signs of hope amidst the carnage. The science and understanding of road impacts is improving. Animals’ specific requirements for passing over and under roads are now known for many species. For example, adding a catwalk-like shelf to a culvert in Montana found many willing users including raccoons, skunks, weasels and more, but not voles. When a plastic pipe was added, tracks showed it was used by meadow voles the first night.

Remarkable efforts by committed people do make a difference and even major highways can be made less deadly. Solutions have been developed and tested and, when money can be found to retrofit roadways, overpasses, underpasses, bridges and other interventions have made a difference. Millions of dollars have been invested in critical crossings and the animals take notice. In some cases, mortality drops dramatically. Improved fencing on I-94 in Minnesota reduced collisions with animals by more than 90%. The savings in reduced collision damage easily offset roadway modifications in many areas.

As a true test of improved understanding of crossing design, we need to look no further than I-90’s Snoqualmie Pass in Washington. The elk herd’s members once being killed in collisions as they attempted to cross the highway now can be found bedded down on the new wildlife over-pass. Concrete walls muffle the sound of the busy highway. Native plants inoculated with endemic fungi provide cover and food. Rock piles and woody debris provide habitat and cover for smaller animals. Camera traps reveal a very busy crossing indeed.

With such a complex topic, everything bad that roads do couldn’t be included. I would have liked to see a chapter on reactive nitrogen deposition (Bainbridge 1991). An examination of the hydrologic effects of so much impermeable surface might also be worthwhile (Leopold 1968). And roads’ chemical impacts are still emerging (Tian et al. 2021). Although the book includes many short descriptions of solutions, I would love to see a...

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