Traffication How Cars Destroy Nature & What We Can Do About It

"[...] What is surprising is the take-home message from this well-written and deeply researched book: that while the slaughter is monstrous, it appears that the animals at greatest risk from our love of the automobile may actually be those that cross no roads at all. [...] Traffication is not a polemic against the car, but it is perhaps a wake-up call to ecologists and those concerned with the biodiversity crisis."
– Mike Toms, British Wildlife 35(3), December 2023

"Traffication tells the story of how quickly the car transformed our world and how, equally quickly, scientists highlighted the downsides. But despite several decades of growing evidence, the impact of traffic on the environment remains focused upon congestion, climate change and air pollution, while ignoring the more rural issues that impact directly on nature. The author offers beautiful, heart felt writing and some hopeful concluding chapters."
– Baroness Jenny Jones, UK Green Party

"Remarkable! An immensely readable eye-opener. How could we have been so unaware of something so obvious and so damaging to wildlife?"
– Tim Birkhead, author of Birds and Us

"Traffication is a book to slow down for: provocative, eye-opening and painstakingly researched. It's going to make me rethink the ways we impact our planet through one of the most simple of acts."
– Stephen Rutt, author of The Eternal Season and The Seafarers

"As the realisation of our treatment of the earth grows, a reassessment is underway, and Traffication adds a new and vital dimension. The benefits and the conveniences of the car are weighed against the devastating toll on wildlife and our own health and, increasingly, it doesn't add up – but is it possible to see a different future? This book says it is. A masterful analysis of a hugely important elephant-in-the-room topic, humanity's addiction to the car."
– Mary Colwell, author of Curlew Moon and Beak, Tooth & Claw

"Paul Donald's Traffication is undoubtedly one of the environmental books of 2023. With perfect timing and tone, the author takes us through several essential learning curves and shows us how the car crisis, which most conservationists have long missed, is overwhelming large parts of nature. I could not recommend it more highly."
– Mark Cocker, author of One Midsummer's Day

"A brilliant and comprehensive expose of what roads are doing to our wildlife: meticulous, persuasive, challenging and brilliantly researched."
– Ben Macdonald, author of Rebirding and Cornerstones

"We know that traffic kills people through injuries, air pollution, and inactivity, but Paul Donald shows with convincing science in his very readable book how, almost unnoticed, traffic has been destroying wildlife and the countryside. He shows too how we can take action that should not be painful."
– Richard Smith, chair of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change

"Everyone who cares about nature should read this book."
– James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life and English Pastoral

"A very informed, impressive book. Essential for understanding the horrifying impact of roads and motor vehicles on nature."
– Derek Gow, author of Bringing Back the Beaver

"This book gives a well-researched and engagingly written account of what is arguably one of the major conservation issues of our time. In drawing attention to the greatly underestimated problems posed to wildlife and the wider environment by our ever-increasing road networks, traffic volumes and speeds, Paul Donald provides an important wake-up call, and importantly, discusses mitigating measures."
– Professor Ian Newton FRS, ornithologist and conservationist

"A meticulously-researched exposé of how we've been asleep at the wheel for years. This is a thought-provoking, and brave, examination of the damage we've caused that will hopefully jolt us from complacency and help us to modify our road-building and driving behaviour for the benefit of wildlife and human health. Traffication is the conservation conundrum we need to address with urgency."
– Dr Ruth Tingay, conservationist and co-director of Wild Justice

"We normally think of road transport as an urban problem but the creeping harm from traffic is suffocating our rural environment like an invasive species. This carefully researched book completely reframes the way that we should view traffic and highlights a blind spot for many conservation organisations."
– Dr Gary Fuller, author of The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution

"Every so often, a book comes along that has a profound impact on how we think and "do" transport. Traffication is one of those books, showing how the narrow focus on making car travel easier and faster is fundamentally harming the systems that wildlife depends on and restricting nature into tighter and tighter pockets. It's a really readable, clear and compelling case to put the countryside more at the heart of how we manage our transport system."
– Richard Hebditch, UK Director, Transport and Environment

"This is a very good book [...] perhaps THE book of the year."
– Mark Avery, author and environmental campaigner

"[...] a fascinating and enlightening book. To call it "revelatory" would be an understatement."
– Chris and Melissa Bruntlett, authors of Curbing Traffic

"A mind-blowing book about an issue that has crept up on conservation organisations so slowly, it has been all but ignored. We didn't even have a name for it – until now. The impacts of traffication are varied and vast. Here, they are explained brilliantly in a way that makes this shocking story accessible to everyone."
– Ian Carter, author of Rhythms of Nature and Human, Nature

"[...] fascinating, eye-opening and easy-to-read."
– Rebecca Armstrong, Birdwatch

"This book is remarkable for several reasons, not least the fact that its author has gathered almost everything published in peer-reviewed journals about the devastating consequences of roads and cars for the natural world. He has then synthesised this vast body of data while deploying the most lucid prose and balanced, non-polemical tone about his subject."
– Mark Cocker, BirdLife

"Traffication should be required reading for any education, training or course for students and transport professionals including engineers, traffic planners, town planners, urban designers, politicians and all those undertaking courses with the word "transport" in the title."
– John Whitelegg, Journal of World Transport Policy & Practice

"A moving read."
– John Miles, Birdwatching.co.uk