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Ben Goldfarb

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Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet Kindle Edition

by Ben Goldfarb (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.8 139 ratings

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Shortlisted for the NYPL's 2024 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award in Nonfiction

A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 and an Editors' Choice • A Science News Favorite Book of 2023 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2023 • A Smithsonian Staff Favorite of 2023 • A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 • A Booklist Top 10 Book on the Environment & Sustainability for 2024

An eye-opening account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager.

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.

From the Publisher

Praise for Crossings from Jeff VanderMeer

Praise for Crossings from Publishers Weekly

Praise for Crossings from Scientific American

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Wide-ranging and absorbing…Brilliant."
― Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books

"Fascinating and compassionate…[Goldfarb] does an admirable job of detailing the ways that highways and freeways divide our cities along racial lines…It’s rare for a work so focused on wildlife conservation to also treat race."
― Emily Raboteau, New York Times Book Review

"Goldfarb is perceptive about how roads tangle animals together with humans…Crossings is well-paced and vivid, an engaging account."
― Timothy Farrington, Wall Street Journal

"A powerhouse of a book, a comprehensive and engaging study of the many ways that roads damage natural habitats."
― David Gessner, Washington Post

"Beyond the staggering data and the constructive ideas, Crossings is an important book because it is timely: Road ecology is bleeding into the public consciousness at a moment when we can still act on its lessons."
― Jonathan C. Slaght, Atlantic

"[A] perceptive book…Goldfarb charts a path toward a less destructive future."
― The New Yorker

"Crossings provides a badly needed corrective…[D]eserves to make the reading lists of policymakers around the world."
― Marina Bolotnikova, Vox

"Chronicles the enormous ecological damage caused by roadbuilding…Goldfarb guides the reader through an array of often heartbreaking stories, from the Los Angeles mountain lions so isolated by highways that they could inbreed themselves into extirpation to salmon populations smothered by tire pollution."
― David Zipper, Bloomberg

"A deeply researched and compelling read…[O]ffers readers a look behind the scenes of a rich but underappreciated field of study that has the potential to affect our everyday lives."
― Sarah Boon, Science

"Engrossing…Goldfarb invites us to contemplate a future of roads that could be much brighter, if we would just adopt an ethic, he says, in which roads embrace the land instead of conquer it."
― Smithsonian Magazine

"[A] swift and winding ride through the science of road ecology…[A] surprising reflection on what we owe to nature…[T]he roadkill you spot along the highway will never look the same."
― Tess Joosse, Scientific American

"Delves into the burgeoning field of road ecology and introduces the impassioned, sometimes eccentric scientists who invite us to perceive our roads as animals do to better understand the ecological impacts."
― Amanda Heidt, Science News

"Goldfarb’s absorbing, highly intelligent book gently shakes us awake from our ethical torpor and helps us confront the conservation problem we perpetrate each time we get behind the wheel, accept a package, or use public transportation."
― M.R. O'Connor, Undark

"The book is teeming with horrifying statistics: More birds die every week on US roads than were killed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; each year, frogs are squished by the millions; in New York alone, a deer collision occurs every eight minutes…While that may sound bleak, Crossings is at times surprisingly funny."
― Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Mother Jones

"[Crossings has] so many cool stories…frogs and turtles being ushered across roads by volunteer hands, a wildlife crossing for cougars in California, citizen roadkill reporting networks. In many ways, it’s a book about the people trying to correct our mistakes."
― Colleen Stinchcombe, Seattle Times

"Goldfarb traveled across the country, and the globe, to learn more about how roads have shaped not just our communities but the natural world around us…[R]oads may be nearly invisible to the modern human, just another necessary part of everyday infrastructure. But to the other species on this planet, roads have fundamentally changed their existence."
― Emily Baron Cadloff, Modern Farmer

"Through expert interviews, compelling research and analysis, and dogged experiential reporting, Goldfarb brings to life some of the core impacts our 40 million miles of roads have had, and are having, on the natural world."
― Brett Berk, Car and Driver

"An eye-opening road trip that spans continents to show how paved roads, seen as markers of civilisation, disrupt the natural world…This is a rare, beautifully written book, which tells us hard truths about roads, cars and life on Earth, but still manages to make us feel positive about the road ahead."
― Vijaysree Venkatraman, New Scientist

"Crossings is science writing at its best…[A] hopeful reminder of our responsibilities in the Anthropocene."
― Miranda Weiss, American Scholar

"An elegant―at times startling―account of how our built environment has become an environmental crisis…A manifesto against unnecessary death."
― Jimmy Tobias, The Nation

"Written elegantly and convincingly, Crossings acknowledges that most of us can't make do without automobiles but urges individual responsibility…as well as public works initiatives of global proportions."
― David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express

"A fresh and startling history of roads, automobiles, and the carnage and destruction they cause…An astute, funny, and imaginative writer, Goldfarb pairs horror with hope as he chronicles the brilliant innovations and tireless advocacy that resulted in lifesaving wildlife crossings, including park-like overpasses and cozy underpasses."
― Booklist (starred review)

"Illuminating, witty…[Crossings is] an astonishingly deep pool of wonders."
― Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Captivating…This one’s a winner."
― Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Goldfarb examines the severe impact of roads on wildlife populations and their migration and reproduction…Roads aren’t going away anytime soon, but Crossings will spark conversation around the future of motorized vehicles and transportation."
― Bookpage (starred review)

"Goldfarb writes with such grace, flair, and wit, and he reveals just how thoroughly roads have reshaped the animal world. This is one of the very best science books that I read last year.”"
― Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

"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 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

"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

"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

"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

"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 --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

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. A recipient of fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Whiting Foundation, he lives in Colorado. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BWGJBTDB
Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (September 12, 2023)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 12, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 13365 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 370 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #176,092 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #21 in Biological Science of Wildlife
- #26 in Environmental Ecology
- #57 in Conservation

Customer Reviews:
4.8 139 ratings

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Ben Goldfarb

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Ben Goldfarb is an award-winning environmental journalist whose work has appeared in publications including the Atlantic, National Geographic, and the New York Times, and has been anthologized in the Best American Science & Nature Writing. He is the author of "Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet" and "Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter," winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

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Blackbird

THE definitive work on the subject

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2023

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In this beautifully written, comprehensive, and staggeringly synthetic work, author Ben Goldfarb introduces us to the myriad negative effects associated with roads, from the sonic impacts on animals adjacent to the tiniest logging roads in U.S. National Forests to the massive mortality on native marsupials in Tasmania. This book is a tour de force on the subject of road ecology and deserves to be read by the widest audience, from highway designers and engineers to Department of Transportation biologists just starting their careers to conservation biologists and interested laypersons and anyone who cares about the natural world and the impacts of humans upon it.

This book is sorely needed as nothing like it currently exists and if we are to reduce the impacts due to the massive proliferation of roads on landscapes, we need to be educated about what the specialists, as well as the "citizen scientists", can tell us through their research and reports - this book does exactly that. And does it in a style that is both engaging and very often humorous. Ben Goldfarb makes accessible to all the breadth of work that is being done on this subject on every continent except Antarctica and provides his readers with a clear-eyed synthesis of what is known and what needs to be done.

Very highly recommended.

13 people found this helpful

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RichHubie

An Important Book

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2024

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Crossings (roads) are just another means of damaging our environment. We go about our daily excursions without realizing the carnage we leave behind. This book explores it all and gives us some solutions to the problems. Road ecology is a new science that’s just getting started. It’s findings will hopefully make crossings safer for our wildlife and even us humans. If we hope to protect the planet we need to stop building roads. We need to make those that are needed safe and smart. Great read. I give the author credit for this readable and well researched book.

One person found this helpful

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Shelley Y. Rose

A road is never just a road

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2023

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Thank you, Ben Goldfarb, for expanding the horizons of this literary fiction buff into the realm of environmental non-fiction. First beavers, now roads. Who knew? Crossings opened my eyes to the unseen (to me) impact that road ecology has on our world. Yes, I live in Michigan, grew up in the Motor City and have traversed the roads that connect - and divide - the great city of Detroit. I have clutched my pearls at the gruesome sight of all the roadkill (deer, skunks, birds) lining I-75 (and other thoroughfares) but until I read Crossings, I thought of these victims as little more than unfortunate animals that failed to cross a buzzing highway populated with tractor trailers, speeding muscle cars, and people trying to get home to the suburbs after a day's work (pre- and post-pandemic anyway). Goldfarb's carefully researched and thoughtfully written book changed my POV and helped me see how our roads have far more impact beyond the apparent (and rigged) Frogger game played by unwitting wildlife and motorists. A road is never just a road, indeed. A great read.

8 people found this helpful

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Sue Short

Interesting

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2023

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I saw the review of this on the NPR website and decided to check it out. At first I thought it would be a complete downer. While bleak, he does have suggestions how to mitigate the problem. If you're interested in how various crossings work and how they reduce roadkill, along with death and injury of drivers then I recommend this book.

6 people found this helpful

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jordan Green

Thorough scope of the problem with roads

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2024

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I recommend this book to anyone who ever traveled a road... Which should be most people, even if you've only ever walked, rolled, or been carried. If you've ever thought about the life killed by your vehicle and multiplied that by all the other vehicles you can imagine, this book is for you. Ben's writing is exceptionally well done and illustrates intricate ways and depths roads affect all forms and aspects of life itself that may not be obvious to many. It is a human responsibility to give a voice to the voiceless life we cohabitation this planet with. Ben has done just that in this book. Hopefully, this is the beginning of more attention to the issue and better solutions in the future!

3 people found this helpful

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karen o'connell

Important and compelling book on road ecology.

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2023

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First, READ THIS BOOK. The subject is hard to read about as it reveals more ways that humanity has changed the face of the earth. And, usually, not for the better. So in a topic that could be nothing but gloom and doom, Ben Goldfarb elevates the conversation. Rather he initiates the conversation we could all be having. And yes, DoT in every state and the federal transportation, you are included in “we.”

Every chapter in this book, could be an entire book on its own. It is a bit of a marvel, then, that the author has distilled this information to the salient points for general consumption. He pulls the thread of it all together on the impact of roads on animals, on humans, on the environment and doesn’t hesitate to highlight where positive actions are being taken and what more can be done. And somehow in that process gives us a laugh when we need it.

I had no clue when I started this book, just how many various ways the bajillion miles of roads on earth impact it. This book made me cringe, it made me chuckle and it made me cry. Yet left me feeling, not “all is lost”, but that there is hope for improvement and mitigation.

5 people found this helpful

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Terry L. Price

Who Knew a Book About Roads Could Be So Captivating?

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2024

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"Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet" by Ben Goldfarb might appear, at first glance, to be a niche topic. However, Goldfarb weaves a compelling narrative that transcends the realm of wildlife corridors and roadkill statistics.

Goldfarb, an environmental journalist, meticulously details the profound influence roads exert on our planet. From habitat fragmentation to the disruption of critical migration patterns, the book explores the ecological consequences we often overlook.

Intriguingly, Goldfarb goes beyond mere exposition. He delves into the ingenious solutions devised by road ecologists – from overpasses designed for safe animal passage to the use of green bridges that blend seamlessly into existing landscapes.

"Crossings" is a captivating exploration of a seemingly mundane subject, leaving the reader with a newfound appreciation for the intricate relationship between roads and the natural world.

One person found this helpful

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Brendan

Crossings was awesome!

Reviewed in Canada on October 5, 2023

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Crossing won't answer why the chicken crossed the road, but it will help you get it to the other side.

Crossings is an amazing follow-up to the author's first book, Eager. Much like in Ben Goldfarbs previous outing, Ben is able to weave a tale that incorporates his personal experiences with those of leading scientists in the field. His ability to incorporate decades of work and the personality of some of the Western hemispheres leading road ecology scientists into a novel that can be understood from anyone from enthusiast to scientist is a feat in itself.

As an ecologist myself I learned a lot about a discipline that I am trying hard not to be obsessed about.

I can't wait for Ben's next book.

W. Lankford

Deeply thought provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2024

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I was tremendously impressed with this book. It is deeply thought provoking and is reassuringly written from the authors personal investigations and a comprehensive set of references.
The understanding of road impacts on wildlife is clearly laid out in all its gore, horrific and extensive impact while also understanding the pragmatics of where we are as a society and visiting some proven mitigation options
I am confident that anyone involved in planning, ecology or interested in lobbying for a better environment would get a loft from reading this book and as a consequence wider society and nature might all benefit from actions that are clearly needed

Jacek

Bardzo ciekawa książka

Reviewed in Poland on November 24, 2023

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Książka jest pasjonująca, świetnie napisana.

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David A Guia

Full of Interesting Facts

Reviewed in Australia on January 15, 2024

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This is a lovely book for those of you out there that want to learn more about something that we really don't think about. The next time you are out for a "drive" you will appreciate what it means to our planet.

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