Book review – Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

8-minute read
keywords: ecology, wildlife conservation

The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but the roads to pretty much everywhere else are paved with the corpses of animals. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb explores the outsized yet underappreciated impacts of the, by one estimate, 65 million kilometres of roads that hold the planet in a paved stranglehold. These extend beyond roadkill to numerous other insidious biological effects. The relatively young discipline of road ecology tries to gauge and mitigate them and sees biologists join forces with engineers and roadbuilders. This is a wide-ranging and eye-opening survey of the situation in the USA and various other countries.

Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, written by Ben Goldfarb, published by W.W. Norton & Company in October 2023 (hardback, 370 pages)

Goldfarb might be familiar to readers from his earlier book on beavers that I reviewed back in 2018. Little did I know that Crossings was already gestating. The roots of this project go back to 2013, with several articles on road ecology published in newspapers and magazines over the years. All this work has now culminated in a rather epic reportage that has been very well-received by the press.

As Goldfarb points out, roadkill is as old as the road, with some animals uniquely vulnerable to being crushed by horse-drawn wagons. However, the phenomenon went into overdrive with the invention of the combustion engine and a new-found need for speed that menaced humans and animals alike (and was initially furiously resisted). With the morbid curiosity typical of biologists, Dayton and Lilian Stoner published the first tally of motorcar casualties in 1925, in the process diagnosing “a malady with no name” (p. 16), as the word roadkill would not be coined for another two decades. The word road ecology was only coined in 1993 by Richard Forman, though it was translated from the German Straßenökologie that was coined in 1981 by Heinz Ellenberg.

As a discipline, road ecology both studies the impact of roads and formulates solutions. Particularly common, and featured extensively in this book, are wildlife crossings. Underpasses guide animals under the road and, through trial and error, we have figured out what does not work (long, dark, and narrow tunnels) and what does (a combination of tunnels and fences). Studies in Wyoming on how roads interfere with the migration of many ungulates have been particularly influential. Other animals have different needs, and the story of overpasses, wildlife bridges, and ecoducts is told through the lens of P-22, the radio-collared cougar that stole the hearts of Los Angeles urbanites. It ultimately led to a successful campaign for a massive overpass that hopefully will reconnect fragmented cougar populations.

“For other animals, [roads] are barriers: despite the good intentions, wildlife crossings cannot serve all animals equally and cannot be constructed everywhere.”

In tropical countries, arboreal species such as primates need canopy rope bridges, while small animals such as amphibians and reptiles are given a helping hand with toad tunnels and bucket brigades. Even fish migration can be thwarted if culverts are only designed to channel water underneath roads as quickly as possible. Ongoing campaigns are trying to restore salmon runs to rivers by retrofitting culverts that are better navigable. And where windshields once resembled “mobile natural-history museums” (p. 156), today they remain squeaky clean, portending a poorly understood insect apocalypse. The monarch butterfly is a rare exception: a long-distance migrant whose path runs parallel to major highway systems and is targeted by rewilding roadside verges.

To us, roads are the unnoticed connective tissue that links places of extraction with industry and commerce, and shuttles commuters between home and work. For other animals, they are barriers: despite the good intentions, wildlife crossings cannot serve all animals equally and cannot be constructed everywhere. Millions of animals still die in collisions every day. Goldfarb addresses the very real concerns of extirpation (the extinction of local populations), habitat fragmentation, interrupted migrations, and noise pollution. With roads come humans who bring deforestation, hunting, real estate development, urban sprawl, tourism, etc.

Amidst this litany of harms, Goldfarb features several topics that will be eye-opening even to ecologists. There is the little-known history of how the US Forest Service constructed one of the world’s largest road networks of now mostly abandoned forest tracks. Roads also feed a diverse community of scavengers that includes humans; a necrobiome that “airbrushes our roadsides, camouflaging a crisis by devouring it” (p. 181). In Tasmania, a small and beleaguered group of wildlife rehabilitators nurses back to health animals that survived collisions, though this Sisyphean task takes a toll on their mental health. In the city of Syracuse, Goldfarb faces the racist legacy of interstate highways that, as in many other US cities, were bulldozed straight through Black and Latino neighbourhoods, extinguishing them in the name of urban renewal. Plans are now afoot to reverse this wrong, move the highway, and create a community where people can again walk to their destinations. In a brilliant flourish, Goldfarb connects this back to the book’s main topic: “Road ecologists and urban advocates are engaged in the same epic project: creating a world that’s amenable to feet” (p. 287).

“Brazil […] shows what government regulation can achieve. Here, highway operators are held legally responsible for dealing with the harm and costs resulting from collisions.”

So far, so good. Goldfarb’s writing shines and certain turns of phrase are memorable, as the above quotes hopefully show. I was initially concerned how US-centric this book would be. Though weighted towards US examples, Goldfarb also visits Wales, Costa Rica, Tasmania, and Brazil, and discusses several European initiatives. Compared to e.g. American Roadkill and the UK-centric Traffication, Crossings looks beyond its borders.

Despite the gloomy picture, there are some encouraging signs. The US Forest Service has started decommissioning parts of its road network. Brazil, meanwhile, shows what government regulation can achieve. Here, highway operators are held legally responsible for dealing with the harm and costs resulting from collisions. A remarkable but rare example of prioritising wildlife over humans is the SP-139 highway that is closed at night and has on purpose been designed as an undulating, winding road, forcing drivers to slow down. Contrast this with the USA, Goldfarb observes sharply, where individual drivers are blamed for collisions. This “deflects culpability from the car companies building ever more massive SUVs and the engineers designing unsafe streets […] we came to rely on cars not by personal choice but by corporate design” (p. 295). As with addressing climate change, individual action only gets us so far; making roads safer demands systemic change, “a public works project, one of history’s most colossal” (p. 296).

And yet, something nagged at me. The focus on mitigation smacks of a palliative solution and Goldfarb concedes the limitations of road ecology. Crossings and fences will not stop the many other impacts of roads and risk becoming “a form of greenwashing […] a fig leaf that conceals and rationalizes destruction” (p. 265). As with other environmental problems, should we not first focus on abandoning or reducing certain behaviours, instead of turning to techno-fixes? Can we imagine something more radical? Can Goldfarb?

“The focus on mitigation smacks of a palliative solution and Goldfarb concedes the limitations of road ecology. […] Can we imagine something more radical? Can Goldfarb?”

To his credit, he admits wrestling with this problem. “The most straightforward solution to the road’s ills would be a collective rejection of automobility […] In the course of writing this book, I’ve felt, at times, like a defeatist—as though, by extolling wildlife passages, I foreclose the possibility of a more radical, carless future” (p. 295). I would have loved to see him explore this further in a dedicated chapter as, in my opinion, environmental problems are best addressed by exploring all solutions: “and” rather than “or”. We will, to use an automotive phrase, have to be firing on all cylinders. Instead, Goldfarb comes down on the side of pragmatism. Bicycles and public transport are great for making urban areas more liveable, but most roadkill happens elsewhere. Furthermore, personal mobility is only part of the story, with logistics making up a huge chunk of traffic. The eye-opening chapter on Brazil, and the outsized influence of China’s Belt and Road Initiative that sees it invest in infrastructure globally, is a forceful reminder that the developmental juggernaut is nigh impossible to slow down, let alone stop. One road ecologist points out that you cannot seriously enter the discussion around roads if you oppose social and economic development, while another chimes in that, whether we like it or not, more roads will be built. Although I do not think resistance is futile, Goldfarb leaves me sympathetic to the road ecologists who are desperately trying to nudge construction projects in directions “that, if not quite “right,” are at least less wrong” (p. 270).

Goldfarb acknowledges the input of some 250 people and even then stresses his book is far from the final word on the subject. He encourages readers to take it as a starting point and read deeper, providing 43 pages of notes to the many sources of information he has used. I would additionally recommend A Clouded Leopard in the Middle of the Road by Australian road ecologist Darryl Jones which was published last year but seems to have flown under the radar compared to Goldfarb’s book. Overall, Crossings is a wide-ranging, eye-opening, and thought-provoking reportage that deserves top marks.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Crossings