Crossings by Ben Goldfarb

Crossings by Ben Goldfarb – How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet – is another book picked for the book club. I wouldn’t have read this book otherwise and that would have meant I would have lost out. It’s an interesting concept, how roads affect our environment and it’s not just roadkill.

I enjoyed the book a lot and I would highly recommend it. It is focused on the US with very little about other countries, which I think would have been interesting to analyse more deeply. One of the non-US things he mentioned was the Tasmania’s rescuers of orphaned wallabies, whose mothers’ were killed by cars, and how they see rehabilitation and rescue in comparison with the US.

The book covers all kinds of animals affected by the roads, not just the ones we would think of, like deer, but monarch butterflies, toads, salmon, and birds. There are ways to minimise the harm though and he talks about that too. There are 2 reasons why I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5. Firstly because he brought race and racism into the discussion, but that subject is very complex and he didn’t explore more of the reasons due to book limitations [possibly] and also because he is an environmental journalist and not someone who has studied social sciences or humanities. Secondly, he didn’t make it clear why we need biological diversity. I know why, but he could have made the case for preserving diversity. Do read the book if you have the time, it’s interesting.

Crossings by Ben Goldfarb

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My rating: 4/5 Stars
Would I recommend it: yes
Published by: W. W. Norton & Company
Year it was published: 2023
Format: Paperback
Genre(s): Science
Pages: 384

About the author: Ben Goldfarb is an award-winning environmental journalist who covers wildlife conservation, marine science, and public lands management, as well as an accomplished fiction writer. His work has been featured in Science, Mother Jones, The Guardian, High Country News, VICE, Audubon Magazine, Modern Farmer, Orion, World Wildlife Magazine, Scientific American, Yale Environment 360, and many other publications. He holds a master of environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and is a 2018 North American Congress for Conservation Biology journalist fellow.
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