“Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet” by Ben Goldfarb, Part 1 of 2

Ben Goldfarb, an American award-winning independent conservation journalist and author, is a leading voice exploring how human infrastructure reshapes the natural world. His acclaimed book, “Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet,” was named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times and other major publications.

“One thing I noticed throughout my career covering those issues was that roads were really at the heart of all of these different processes of ecological degradation.” Ben Goldfarb explains the often-invisible costs of roads, including habitat fragmentation and genetic isolation. “We’re seeing the animals who are killed by cars; what we’re not seeing are all of the animals who can’t cross the road altogether. Well, that’s the situation that deer, and bears, and moose, and all kinds of animals are up against every day. A road might only be a hundred feet wide from shoulder to shoulder, and yet that wall of traffic is denying that animal access to potentially tens of thousands of acres of habitat.”

In his book, Ben Goldfarb shares the poignant story of P-22, a mountain lion-individual trapped in an area of roughly eight square miles (21 square kilometers). “He survived, but he was just never going to find a mate. He was this really powerful symbol for how much this habitat connectivity matters.” “I think that’s the irony of roads: it is that for us, they’re these tools of social connection and mobility, and for animals, they’re these forces of division and disconnection. Let’s think about what a road must be like from a bobcat’s perspective, or a coyote’s, and figure out how to make these structures a little less ecologically harmful.”