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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.
Ben Goldfarb is the author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the New York Times, and many other publications, and has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. A recipient of fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Whiting Foundation, he lives in Colorado.
"A tour de force. Ben Goldfarb has done a masterful job of helping us see the world from the vantage point of all the life that must somehow cope with these alien landforms – and of suggesting how we might lessen the remarkable toll they take."
– Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org
"Ben Goldfarb is the kind of gonzo environmental journalist Hunter S. Thompson would have loved. Crossings, his meditation on the ecological devastation roads and highways inflict – and on the very clever responses from humans and other creatures that road life demands – is an absolute shining star of a book. Modernity and the mobility all we Earth animals require is never going to look the same again."
– Dan Flores, best-selling author of Coyote America and Wild New World
"A truly important and landmark book on a subject whose full impacts continue to be disregarded or underestimated in considering conservation efforts. Crossings is a moving, compassionate, and indispensable guide to navigating the issue of wildlife survival – and our own."
– Jeff VanderMeer, best-selling author of the Southern Reach Trilogy
"Ben Goldfarb approaches our fellow animals with delighted curiosity and rare perception. A deeply researched, wonderfully vivid, and genuinely hopeful book."
– Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts
"A brilliantly panoptic look at our planet's sprawling network of roads: what's wrong with them, how they got that way, and how they could be set right. Precise in detail but vast in scale, Goldfarb's storytelling carries echoes of Michael Pollan and John McPhee, but with a wry humor that is uniquely his own."
– Robert Moor, best-selling author of On Trails
"Crossings, Ben Goldfarb's impassioned quest to understand the ecology of roads and its impact on the natural world, is a marvel. The reader learns something new on every page, disturbed and amazed in equal measure. Goldfarb moves us briskly along the manipulated ecosystem of the highway, with vivid, evocative pitstops for environmental history, ecology, and the built environment. With 15 million additional miles of road scheduled to be built over the globe in the near future, the time for this book is now. Crossings adds a new perspective to conversations on how humans have reshaped life on earth."
– The Whiting Award Judges' Citation
"Like some David Attenborough of the asphalt, Ben Goldfarb has written a fascinating guide to understanding the wilder side of roads, both symbols of freedom and harbingers of unnatural selection."
– Tom Vanderbilt, best-selling author of Traffic
