As an update to my comment in your Part I:: Our two mile dirt road is populated by black bears, deer, black snakes, squirrels and humans with many opinions -- few who consider the road as anything other than a way to get to where they want to go. A motion to pave the road was up for debate at the Road Association meeting last Saturday. It was well attended and contentious. For now, 85% of my neighbors voted NOT to pave. Phew.
There are mountain springs that run under the big hill going up. I volunteered to map the water sources that run under and around the road area. From there, I will venture into animal habitat and crossings. Thank you for doing so much of my legwork by providing the resources.
By the way, I mentioned your Substack, in an interview with Julie Gabrielli, as one of my essential resources. Thank you, always. Katharine
I'm happy to hear that your road is safe from pavement for now, Katharine. I know from personal experience that it's a hard fight to win as the years go by and folks and businesses move in. It's such a leap of perspective for any of us to shift from roads-as-infrastructure to roads-as-habitat. Good luck with those conversations. I'll admit that dirt roads can be difficult if poorly built/maintained, and the phosphorus run-off can cause nutrient problems for bodies of water, but these can be avoided in most cases, I think. As for crossings, the fencing/crossing strategy is generally used on bigger, faster roads, but certainly stream crossings or other bridged sections should be built to provide underpasses that resemble natural habitat as much as possible.
I'm sort of vacationing this week with family, so my inbox overfloweth, but I did see you sent a link to that interview with Julie. I hope to get to it soon. Thank you very much for mentioning the Field Guide.
I've long believed that it is just as well we do not know the full toll roads - let alone the automobile culture as a whole that they are a byproduct of - have taken. It would be sickening beyond all fathoming. I grew up in a region where entire populations of large reptiles were extirpated by roads, and they were the last of what original wildness hadn't already been eradicated. I now live not far from Banff Park with its wildlife overpasses, as you mentioned. I am very happy to see these band-aids as you call them and as they indeed are, band-aids on a cut throat. I can't avoid seeing deeper however, to the math that underwrites all this. That is, how only the excess wealth generated by the oil economy gives us the financial option to pursue these things. An economy completely dependent on growth to function to this degree, with economic growth being 97% correlated to how much fossil fuel we burn in a given year. In other words, for one thing, the more means we desire to have to build overpasses, the more vechicles we must put out on those roads. When I take this stuff into account i see us not so much as something intentional working itself out, but as a train with the driver being an illusion - they are not really there, there is no driver - derailing into a colossal accident in slow motion. Given the contract, i have often wondered what exactly we think the day we are saving these species for looks like? (Assuming we are saving anything, the game is still in-play, "saving" may be the wrong word.) I guess it looks like today, we are saving them for right now. The math suggests we aren't going to have much of a tomorrow. But maybe that's the answer - WE aren't, but they therefore will.
This is all really well said. Thanks for providing more context. I think I see it as something between trickle-down economics for wildlife (trickle being the key word) and a wee bit of reparations. But don't forget the economic argument that convinces highway depts to do this work: all the social costs that come with accidents. But the good news is that despite the dark context this work for wildlife does perhaps bode well for the long-term, either theirs or all of ours.
The thing that bodes best today for wildlife in the long-run, having lived and worked conservation issues literally all my life, is indeed the fallout of the very unsustainability of our model, combined with every measure known to us indicating we are now well into that fallout stage, that age of consequences. The main consequence for us at this stage in our trajectory being that we are in our decline-and-fall as a civilization, global this time. All this stuff we consider baseline for us is going away, including our numbers, cos this is how this stuff works. I find this to be the place of hope, today. Unlike most, i don't find hope in optimistic fictions. Of course, most of those folks don't see their ideas - electric cars, solar power, stop eating meat, etc etc - as fictions, and this is understandable. Few people have had the luxury of space, solitude, time and the necessary broad-based research and synthesis to even know what the full math would be, let alone perform it. When you have had that luxury and you have done the math, you understand there's only one way this will go. Myriad details to get lost in, sure - such as climate change, our favorite one to get lost in right now - but only one bottom line. The moral if we must have one? Do for today. Be grateful for it and enjoy it to the full extent of your ability. This planet has billions of years left and it will explode back to living glory. We ourselves in this configuration are but a brief anomaly.
A brief anomaly, indeed, but a supervolcanic one. Or meteoric, for a peppier metaphor. The problem, as you know, is that by whatever measure we gauge the transformation that's coming the cost to the living world will be (is already) catastrophic. We have tied the fate of the recognizable world to our own, which is as absurd as it is terrifying. So the optimistic plans/visions/fictions are also a path that reduces the harm, so down the yellow brick road we go. We can debate the improvements that are possible, but it's the only way to go. If, along the way, we can convince more folks to care about what's being lost outside the human theater, then so much the better.
I totally agree with you on that analogy of us this time around. Thanks to the accident of oil, and our creations of technologies able to harness larger and larger explosions involving it to drive pistons and whatever, we have achieved asteroid level impacts. But the earth has survived asteroids and sudden changes of climate that in other cases were not human induced like this one, and mass extinctions involved the majority of speceis extant, and recovered. I'm not making excuses for us. We are going to be capable of no more than the odd bandaid to help reduce harm because given our model and our proportions that is all that is possible for us, the model and scale has left us overwhelmed with deadly imperatives about which we have no choice. It's also very easy to forget for those of us thinking deeply about this stuff that we are breathing rarified air - most of humanity is thinking about their paycheque and their next case of beer and their next new truck. That's it. Those people make up the critical mass that drive decisions and that is not going to change. A culture can't go out of its way to train people to be mercenary and aquistive and machine-oriented and urban/dimissive of nature right down to their very DNA and then give a shit about nature when things inevitably get critical. Worse, taken as a mass, humanity today is a non-thinking superorganism. It's a yeast, the thinking from one side cancels the thinking on the other and you are left with a vast mindless apetite and that's all. That's our reality. People will tell you coming to such evidence-based conclusions must not be done because it is "defeatist" but this is by no means a given, it's up to the individual to be defeated or not. I see this sort of clear-eyed and merciless weighing of the evidence as absolutely necessary for understanding where our focus should be, and right now i think where we are focusing is futile.
The Earth will be fine in the largest sense, absolutely. Paleontologist/writer Stephen Jay Gould spoke at my college graduation about how the environmentalist slogan of "save the Earth" was missing the point. Earth rolls along on a timeframe we can't imagine, so what we're "saving" is the recognizable Earth that also keeps us alive. But the collateral damage to all that is astonishing now is what kills me and keeps me scribbling, esp. given how much (nearly all) is unnecessarily falling under the wheels of utterly meaningless population growth and "progress." As for what can be done and how effective it will be, I think there's a glimmer behind the social reality you describe. Everyone living paycheck to paycheck or simply lost in the theater and thinking it's reality may not give a shit, or know enough to give a shit, but they're contained within a story that can be changed. And they'll just change with it, as long as the paycheck and theater are largely intact. Change the energy system and cars and construction materials, and folks just grumble along. Change industrial agriculture, and folks just keep plucking stuff from the supermarket shelves to feed their kids. Etc etc. There's the larger question you raise about whether any of this means enough, or moves fast enough, to limit the mass extinction to "manageable" levels. I have my doubts, but again, it's the only path there is. We need a wholesale reduction and reimagining of civilization, I know, but we should still hit the brakes while skidding off the road, despite not knowing if what awaits us is a ditch or a cliff. Anyway, thank you again for such clear and sharp thinking.
Thank you for your kindness to that red fox, despite his ingratitude. :) Seeing your boot next to that beautiful gray fox's body at the top of the post, I wondered if you are familiar with Amanda Stronza? She is a professor of anthropology at Texas A&M. Several years ago, she started creating memorial art with the bodies of road-killed animals. It's so heartbreaking and life-affirming, all at once, the best of humanity countering us at our worst and most careless. Click through to the gallery, when you are ready. It's incredible. Perhaps a slight antidote to all the dark data on roads you've been swimming in these past few weeks.
I wonder if more crossings could prevent situations like this in my neighborhood? Huge, overfed on bird food, garbage, and left out pet food black bear wanders the suburban backyards. Wildlife such as this have moved into the gullies and greenbelts all around Puget Sound. This bear looks so out of place.
That's hard to know, Sylvia. Everything depends on geography. Crossings keep habitat connected, but they don't box out wildlife from neighborhoods. Maybe better integrated wild habitat would make bears less likely to munch on pet food and bird food, but it probably has more to do with the overall loss of habitat and the spread of neighborhoods into what's left. And of course, with bears and other smart animals, they have personalities and curiosities and they know an easy meal when they smell it. In the big picture, crossings are about empathy and about integrating human and wildlife geographies, so there are lots of things to learn about finding ways to live together.
Thanks for your reply... There are bears all over the suburbs and wilder places in cities. I hope this news gets people to put away the bear treats, maybe scare them a bit.
It happens that I'm driving part of the way on Hwy 93 along Flathead Lake to Kalispell for a short visit. Quick check of info on this project, looks like most of the crossings are not where I'll be driving. This has been going on for 25 years now -- from the Peoples Way Parnership site:
"The Spirit of Place constitutes more than just the road, it takes into account the surrounding mountains, plains, hills, forests, valleys, and sky. It includes the paths of waters, glaciers, winds, plants, animals, and native people — the whole continuum of what is seen, touched, felt, and traveled through. The design of the roadway would be premised on the idea that the road is a visitor and should respond to and respect the Spirit of Place."
Now that is a great idea. Thanks for your hard work keeping us informed.
Thank you, Jason, I found both this and your related piece last week very interesting. Thanks for introducing me to Ben Goldfarb's book too as it looks fascinating but as far I can tell, it isn't available in the UK which is a shame. For others in the UK who are interested in this topic, I'd recommend 'Traffication: How cars destroy nature & what we can do about it' by Paul F. Donald which was published last year. Donald worked in scientific research for the RSPB for many years and as well as providing a really good overview of the evidence on the impacts of traffic in wildlife, he makes some really interesting points about the nature conservation movement's failure to treat this issue with the same significance as things like intensive farming. In terms of solutions, he also highlights what individuals can do including the importance of driving more slowly as this helps reduce noise and air pollution as well as the chances of hitting something. I read the book nearly a year ago and it's one I still think about a lot.
Thanks very much for your UK perspective and the book recommendation, Ruth. Odd that Crossings isn't available in the UK, but perhaps it will be soon. Without knowing anything about Traffication, I think I understand why it still sticks with you. Once we start seeing through the lens of wildlife/vehicle collisions, and we know the scale of the losses, it changes how we see the world and our daily life within it. And you make a good point about noise; that's something I'll address separately another day, as sort of a companion piece to a series I did about noise in the oceans (titled Quieting the Anthropocene Seas).
Thank you for taking on this daunting topic. Here in Maine, when I write letters against allowing developments in the remote areas of Maine, I point out, hoping to get some interest from those who don't care about the environment, that we have a relatively small population with a large area and cannot continually provide public services like fire/police, snow removal, road maintenance, etc. for an infinitely growing road system. I think part of the problem is the seemingly infinite federal and state subsidies that kick in when roads and developments are built. It isn't always expensive enough to cause society to weigh carefully all the important issues. Of course I mostly don't know what I'm talking about because I don't have the time to research it completely, but it is what I suspect.
As for small animals, somewhere I've read that the crows often clean them up first thing in the morning so that the carnage is not seen by most people. I suspect that they even watch for it along salamander and frog migration routes in the early spring. When I see salamander and frog carnage on my way home from helping them cross at a major crossing, the evidence seems to be gone the next day the times I've had to take that route the next day. Anecdotal evidence.
Thank you, Leda. Ben Goldfarb writes at length about the "necrobiome" of roads and roadkill. It's a new massive ecological niche in evolutionary terms. I don't have a sense of how much is cleaned up or how fast, but I'm sure that the amount that gets eaten (and thus disappeared from view) contributes to our lack of awareness of the carnage.
I don't know anything about the subsidies for road-building per se, but as you know all the forests in Maine are laced with logging roads, which from a resource extraction perspective are the equivalent of paths between rows in a farm. The forests are crops rather than the deep dark habitat they once were.
You managed to remind me of how miserable I feel about the devastation our species visits on wildlife and at the same time gave me something to feel good about. So, well done. Now how in the world do we get wildlife crossings prioritized enough to happen at all ever in cash-strapped Iowa?
Thank you, Diane. I'd say that Iowa like any other state should see that wildlife crossings are a way to save money. The costs to people, communities, state agencies, etc. of all those collisions is extraordinary. And there's federal money to leverage. Every time the highway dept. and other agencies schedule the rebuilding/replacement of a culvert, bridge, or road, it can be done to prioritize wildlife crossings. There should be a constant conversation going between the transportation dept. and the wildlife/conservation dept.
Jason, thank you.
As an update to my comment in your Part I:: Our two mile dirt road is populated by black bears, deer, black snakes, squirrels and humans with many opinions -- few who consider the road as anything other than a way to get to where they want to go. A motion to pave the road was up for debate at the Road Association meeting last Saturday. It was well attended and contentious. For now, 85% of my neighbors voted NOT to pave. Phew.
There are mountain springs that run under the big hill going up. I volunteered to map the water sources that run under and around the road area. From there, I will venture into animal habitat and crossings. Thank you for doing so much of my legwork by providing the resources.
By the way, I mentioned your Substack, in an interview with Julie Gabrielli, as one of my essential resources. Thank you, always. Katharine
I'm happy to hear that your road is safe from pavement for now, Katharine. I know from personal experience that it's a hard fight to win as the years go by and folks and businesses move in. It's such a leap of perspective for any of us to shift from roads-as-infrastructure to roads-as-habitat. Good luck with those conversations. I'll admit that dirt roads can be difficult if poorly built/maintained, and the phosphorus run-off can cause nutrient problems for bodies of water, but these can be avoided in most cases, I think. As for crossings, the fencing/crossing strategy is generally used on bigger, faster roads, but certainly stream crossings or other bridged sections should be built to provide underpasses that resemble natural habitat as much as possible.
I'm sort of vacationing this week with family, so my inbox overfloweth, but I did see you sent a link to that interview with Julie. I hope to get to it soon. Thank you very much for mentioning the Field Guide.
I've long believed that it is just as well we do not know the full toll roads - let alone the automobile culture as a whole that they are a byproduct of - have taken. It would be sickening beyond all fathoming. I grew up in a region where entire populations of large reptiles were extirpated by roads, and they were the last of what original wildness hadn't already been eradicated. I now live not far from Banff Park with its wildlife overpasses, as you mentioned. I am very happy to see these band-aids as you call them and as they indeed are, band-aids on a cut throat. I can't avoid seeing deeper however, to the math that underwrites all this. That is, how only the excess wealth generated by the oil economy gives us the financial option to pursue these things. An economy completely dependent on growth to function to this degree, with economic growth being 97% correlated to how much fossil fuel we burn in a given year. In other words, for one thing, the more means we desire to have to build overpasses, the more vechicles we must put out on those roads. When I take this stuff into account i see us not so much as something intentional working itself out, but as a train with the driver being an illusion - they are not really there, there is no driver - derailing into a colossal accident in slow motion. Given the contract, i have often wondered what exactly we think the day we are saving these species for looks like? (Assuming we are saving anything, the game is still in-play, "saving" may be the wrong word.) I guess it looks like today, we are saving them for right now. The math suggests we aren't going to have much of a tomorrow. But maybe that's the answer - WE aren't, but they therefore will.
This is all really well said. Thanks for providing more context. I think I see it as something between trickle-down economics for wildlife (trickle being the key word) and a wee bit of reparations. But don't forget the economic argument that convinces highway depts to do this work: all the social costs that come with accidents. But the good news is that despite the dark context this work for wildlife does perhaps bode well for the long-term, either theirs or all of ours.
The thing that bodes best today for wildlife in the long-run, having lived and worked conservation issues literally all my life, is indeed the fallout of the very unsustainability of our model, combined with every measure known to us indicating we are now well into that fallout stage, that age of consequences. The main consequence for us at this stage in our trajectory being that we are in our decline-and-fall as a civilization, global this time. All this stuff we consider baseline for us is going away, including our numbers, cos this is how this stuff works. I find this to be the place of hope, today. Unlike most, i don't find hope in optimistic fictions. Of course, most of those folks don't see their ideas - electric cars, solar power, stop eating meat, etc etc - as fictions, and this is understandable. Few people have had the luxury of space, solitude, time and the necessary broad-based research and synthesis to even know what the full math would be, let alone perform it. When you have had that luxury and you have done the math, you understand there's only one way this will go. Myriad details to get lost in, sure - such as climate change, our favorite one to get lost in right now - but only one bottom line. The moral if we must have one? Do for today. Be grateful for it and enjoy it to the full extent of your ability. This planet has billions of years left and it will explode back to living glory. We ourselves in this configuration are but a brief anomaly.
A brief anomaly, indeed, but a supervolcanic one. Or meteoric, for a peppier metaphor. The problem, as you know, is that by whatever measure we gauge the transformation that's coming the cost to the living world will be (is already) catastrophic. We have tied the fate of the recognizable world to our own, which is as absurd as it is terrifying. So the optimistic plans/visions/fictions are also a path that reduces the harm, so down the yellow brick road we go. We can debate the improvements that are possible, but it's the only way to go. If, along the way, we can convince more folks to care about what's being lost outside the human theater, then so much the better.
I totally agree with you on that analogy of us this time around. Thanks to the accident of oil, and our creations of technologies able to harness larger and larger explosions involving it to drive pistons and whatever, we have achieved asteroid level impacts. But the earth has survived asteroids and sudden changes of climate that in other cases were not human induced like this one, and mass extinctions involved the majority of speceis extant, and recovered. I'm not making excuses for us. We are going to be capable of no more than the odd bandaid to help reduce harm because given our model and our proportions that is all that is possible for us, the model and scale has left us overwhelmed with deadly imperatives about which we have no choice. It's also very easy to forget for those of us thinking deeply about this stuff that we are breathing rarified air - most of humanity is thinking about their paycheque and their next case of beer and their next new truck. That's it. Those people make up the critical mass that drive decisions and that is not going to change. A culture can't go out of its way to train people to be mercenary and aquistive and machine-oriented and urban/dimissive of nature right down to their very DNA and then give a shit about nature when things inevitably get critical. Worse, taken as a mass, humanity today is a non-thinking superorganism. It's a yeast, the thinking from one side cancels the thinking on the other and you are left with a vast mindless apetite and that's all. That's our reality. People will tell you coming to such evidence-based conclusions must not be done because it is "defeatist" but this is by no means a given, it's up to the individual to be defeated or not. I see this sort of clear-eyed and merciless weighing of the evidence as absolutely necessary for understanding where our focus should be, and right now i think where we are focusing is futile.
The Earth will be fine in the largest sense, absolutely. Paleontologist/writer Stephen Jay Gould spoke at my college graduation about how the environmentalist slogan of "save the Earth" was missing the point. Earth rolls along on a timeframe we can't imagine, so what we're "saving" is the recognizable Earth that also keeps us alive. But the collateral damage to all that is astonishing now is what kills me and keeps me scribbling, esp. given how much (nearly all) is unnecessarily falling under the wheels of utterly meaningless population growth and "progress." As for what can be done and how effective it will be, I think there's a glimmer behind the social reality you describe. Everyone living paycheck to paycheck or simply lost in the theater and thinking it's reality may not give a shit, or know enough to give a shit, but they're contained within a story that can be changed. And they'll just change with it, as long as the paycheck and theater are largely intact. Change the energy system and cars and construction materials, and folks just grumble along. Change industrial agriculture, and folks just keep plucking stuff from the supermarket shelves to feed their kids. Etc etc. There's the larger question you raise about whether any of this means enough, or moves fast enough, to limit the mass extinction to "manageable" levels. I have my doubts, but again, it's the only path there is. We need a wholesale reduction and reimagining of civilization, I know, but we should still hit the brakes while skidding off the road, despite not knowing if what awaits us is a ditch or a cliff. Anyway, thank you again for such clear and sharp thinking.
Thank-you as well. “Save the Earth” indeed. Save our civilization is what we mean. Cheers, good chat - I appreciate it.
Thank you for your kindness to that red fox, despite his ingratitude. :) Seeing your boot next to that beautiful gray fox's body at the top of the post, I wondered if you are familiar with Amanda Stronza? She is a professor of anthropology at Texas A&M. Several years ago, she started creating memorial art with the bodies of road-killed animals. It's so heartbreaking and life-affirming, all at once, the best of humanity countering us at our worst and most careless. Click through to the gallery, when you are ready. It's incredible. Perhaps a slight antidote to all the dark data on roads you've been swimming in these past few weeks.
https://www.amandastronza.com/passions#memorials
Her Instagram account is well worth following, if you do that (I don't anymore, but when I did, she was one of the few I subscribed to.)
Whoa, her art is beautiful and brilliant. Again, I wish I'd known about this before. I'll squeeze it in this week too... Thank you so much.
I wonder if more crossings could prevent situations like this in my neighborhood? Huge, overfed on bird food, garbage, and left out pet food black bear wanders the suburban backyards. Wildlife such as this have moved into the gullies and greenbelts all around Puget Sound. This bear looks so out of place.
https://www.komonews.com/news/local/gallery/bothell-neighbors-mesmerized-by-black-bear-munching-on-birdseed-in-backyard-animal-cellphone-footage-homeowner-washington-department-of-fish-and-wildlife?photo=1
That's hard to know, Sylvia. Everything depends on geography. Crossings keep habitat connected, but they don't box out wildlife from neighborhoods. Maybe better integrated wild habitat would make bears less likely to munch on pet food and bird food, but it probably has more to do with the overall loss of habitat and the spread of neighborhoods into what's left. And of course, with bears and other smart animals, they have personalities and curiosities and they know an easy meal when they smell it. In the big picture, crossings are about empathy and about integrating human and wildlife geographies, so there are lots of things to learn about finding ways to live together.
Thanks for your reply... There are bears all over the suburbs and wilder places in cities. I hope this news gets people to put away the bear treats, maybe scare them a bit.
It happens that I'm driving part of the way on Hwy 93 along Flathead Lake to Kalispell for a short visit. Quick check of info on this project, looks like most of the crossings are not where I'll be driving. This has been going on for 25 years now -- from the Peoples Way Parnership site:
"The Spirit of Place constitutes more than just the road, it takes into account the surrounding mountains, plains, hills, forests, valleys, and sky. It includes the paths of waters, glaciers, winds, plants, animals, and native people — the whole continuum of what is seen, touched, felt, and traveled through. The design of the roadway would be premised on the idea that the road is a visitor and should respond to and respect the Spirit of Place."
Now that is a great idea. Thanks for your hard work keeping us informed.
Thank you, Jason, I found both this and your related piece last week very interesting. Thanks for introducing me to Ben Goldfarb's book too as it looks fascinating but as far I can tell, it isn't available in the UK which is a shame. For others in the UK who are interested in this topic, I'd recommend 'Traffication: How cars destroy nature & what we can do about it' by Paul F. Donald which was published last year. Donald worked in scientific research for the RSPB for many years and as well as providing a really good overview of the evidence on the impacts of traffic in wildlife, he makes some really interesting points about the nature conservation movement's failure to treat this issue with the same significance as things like intensive farming. In terms of solutions, he also highlights what individuals can do including the importance of driving more slowly as this helps reduce noise and air pollution as well as the chances of hitting something. I read the book nearly a year ago and it's one I still think about a lot.
Thanks very much for your UK perspective and the book recommendation, Ruth. Odd that Crossings isn't available in the UK, but perhaps it will be soon. Without knowing anything about Traffication, I think I understand why it still sticks with you. Once we start seeing through the lens of wildlife/vehicle collisions, and we know the scale of the losses, it changes how we see the world and our daily life within it. And you make a good point about noise; that's something I'll address separately another day, as sort of a companion piece to a series I did about noise in the oceans (titled Quieting the Anthropocene Seas).
Thank you for taking on this daunting topic. Here in Maine, when I write letters against allowing developments in the remote areas of Maine, I point out, hoping to get some interest from those who don't care about the environment, that we have a relatively small population with a large area and cannot continually provide public services like fire/police, snow removal, road maintenance, etc. for an infinitely growing road system. I think part of the problem is the seemingly infinite federal and state subsidies that kick in when roads and developments are built. It isn't always expensive enough to cause society to weigh carefully all the important issues. Of course I mostly don't know what I'm talking about because I don't have the time to research it completely, but it is what I suspect.
As for small animals, somewhere I've read that the crows often clean them up first thing in the morning so that the carnage is not seen by most people. I suspect that they even watch for it along salamander and frog migration routes in the early spring. When I see salamander and frog carnage on my way home from helping them cross at a major crossing, the evidence seems to be gone the next day the times I've had to take that route the next day. Anecdotal evidence.
Thank you, Leda. Ben Goldfarb writes at length about the "necrobiome" of roads and roadkill. It's a new massive ecological niche in evolutionary terms. I don't have a sense of how much is cleaned up or how fast, but I'm sure that the amount that gets eaten (and thus disappeared from view) contributes to our lack of awareness of the carnage.
I don't know anything about the subsidies for road-building per se, but as you know all the forests in Maine are laced with logging roads, which from a resource extraction perspective are the equivalent of paths between rows in a farm. The forests are crops rather than the deep dark habitat they once were.
Thank you for paying attention to all this.
You managed to remind me of how miserable I feel about the devastation our species visits on wildlife and at the same time gave me something to feel good about. So, well done. Now how in the world do we get wildlife crossings prioritized enough to happen at all ever in cash-strapped Iowa?
Thank you, Diane. I'd say that Iowa like any other state should see that wildlife crossings are a way to save money. The costs to people, communities, state agencies, etc. of all those collisions is extraordinary. And there's federal money to leverage. Every time the highway dept. and other agencies schedule the rebuilding/replacement of a culvert, bridge, or road, it can be done to prioritize wildlife crossings. There should be a constant conversation going between the transportation dept. and the wildlife/conservation dept.
Here are a few Iowa-related sites I found:
https://www.sierraclub.org/iowa/wildlife-corridors
https://bewildrewild.org/projects/over-under-wildlife-crossings
https://www.anecdata.org/projects/view/iowa-roadkill-and-animal-crossings
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/27/bison-bridge-wildlife-crossing-mississippi-river
Hope this helps.
Thank you for your perspective. And the more so for the links.