I'm Heather Marie montia and you are watching PBS books thank you for joining us PBS books is speaking with conservation journalist and awardwinning Ben Goldfarb author of eager the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter and his latest book Crossings how Road ecology is shaping the future of our planet well earlier this year in case you missed it PBS launched an unprecedented environment mental and climate programming initiative that explores impacts on the country and the planet this comprehensive effort marks a bold commitment to bring together the very best in science history and news programming we are building on more than 200 hours of climate and environmental content that is currently accessible throughout various PBS platforms and PBS and its member stations continue to focus on this on the challenges of the changing climate while highlighting examples of positive impact well this year there have been so many diverse perspectives that have launched and that continue to be produced from the human footprint to America outdoors with Baron thirston Nova nature and even PBS digital Studios including weathered and more and so today I here to explore this important book The Cross scenes how Road ecology is shaping the future of our planet I'd like to welcome Ben hey thanks so much for having me Heather hey Ben well we are so glad to have you and for those people out there maybe like me I mean I could figure out what what road ecology was but I didn't really know I hadn't really thought about it can you explain what rad ecology is sure so Road ecology is the science that looks at how roads and really all of our transportation infrastructure shape the natural world uh in particular plants and animals uh and you know certainly those you know there are conspicuous impact right we've all seen the dead deer or raccoon or aasum or squirrel by the the side of the road you know that's the kind of the most obvious manifestation of those impacts and you know certainly Road ecology uh is concerned with roadkill but there are lots of other Road related problems as well there's the the kind of the barrier effect where traffic prevents animals from migrating alog together there's road salt which were you know dumping on our highways in incredible quantities and are turning rivers and lakes into estuaries there's noise pollution which is driving animals away from vast swaths of habitat so Road ecology is really the study of all of those different Road impacts and what we do about them most most important okay do you consider yourself a road ecologist after all of this research and how did you get involved in in this field to write this very important book uh no I I definitely don't consider myself a Ric colist I'm a journalist so I you know I I know a lot of Ric lists now and I I certainly draw upon their uh knowledge and and expertise in this book very very heavily but I'll leave the the real rology to the real experts I'm just their humble scribe I ask for this how this how this book came together it came together I guess it really began in some ways almost exactly 10 years ago in October 2013 I was uh in Montana writing about habitat connectivity you know the idea that animals need to move and migrate across these large Landscapes to find the food and shelter and mates that they need all the stuff that we need as humans right uh and Roads get in the way of that uh they impede those those animal movements and in 2013 I had the opportunity to visit uh these wild black Crossings you know overpasses and underpasses that help animals cross a highway in Montana safely and it was standing on top of one of those Wildlife overpasses this amazing beautiful piece of infrastructure that was built for the use of of wild animals elk and moose and grizzly bears that was just so inspiring you know we do so much in this on this planet to make animals lives harder and more difficult and more dangerous uh and here was this beautiful structure we built to make their lives a little bit safer and easier and that kind of captivated my imagination and ultimately led to this book so can you describe in in a few paragraphs I guess or a few talking points really The Arc of your book describe your book summarize your book for us yeah that's a that's a a good a good question and one that I should probably be better at answering in in some in some ways you know I think the book sort of traces the trajectory of this this field of science and all of the different manifestations of how roads and and nature interact you know and again the the obvious ones right there's there's roadkill the dead animal by the side of the highway and that's really where Road ecology begins you know shortly after the Advent of the car uh you know biologists begin to notice dead garter snakes and ground squirrels and woodpeckers and they're you know counting all of these lost lives and start sort of ringing their hands about the the biological toll that roads are taking and over time you know Road ecology really diversifies it it branches out into many different subfields and there you know there are scientists looking at uh you know the impacts of Forest roads you know all of these dirt logging roads which are bleeding sediment into streams and smothering fish eggs and you know there are researchers looking at that noise pollution issue and finding that you know the noise from roads is chasing uh song birds especially away from places that that otherwise want to live and there were researchers looking at scavengers you know the the golden eagles and bald eagles and Ravens and magpies that all come to the road to feed on the roadkill and you know use the road as habitat but kind of become roadkill themselves sometimes as well uh so that's that's really the The Arc of the book in some ways is just following this growing diversifying field of science into all of these little corners and nooks and rabbit holes just as roads themselves kind of snake into all of our our sort of wildest Landscapes um so that's that's what the book's about is about this you know this ongoing quest to understand how Road and nature interact so your book from the very beginning really pulls Us in right I think you start correct me if I'm wrong but with the the cliff swallow um and and then you really establish very clearly and in this fun tone in in a really interesting way that roads equal freedom for Americans and death for animals can you read something from your book that highlights this yeah I would I would love to those you know those Cliff swallows just briefly are I think they're an amazing story because they really illustrate that roads are causing Evolution itself you know cliff swallow are evolving to have shorter Wings which makes them better at avoiding cars and trucks and it's just an incredible Testament to how deeply embedded roads are in nature and ecosystems and and animals very DNA at this point um so that yeah that I'd love to read a quick passage from um from the introduction to Crossings um this is the the top of the top of page four I I I hope gets to the the Paradox of Roads or the irony of Roads the ways in which they're they're influencing human lives and animal lives in very different ways roads are both logistical Essentials and cultural artifacts they epitomize Freedom the architecture of our restlessness per Rebecca solnet the two lanes that take us anywhere per Bruce Springstein to us roads signify connection and escape to other life forms they spell death and division sometime during the 20th century scientists have written roadkill surpassed hunting as quote the leading direct human cause of vertebrate mortality on land name your environmental ill dams poaching mega fires and consider that roads kill more creatures with less Fanfare than any of them more birds die on American roads every week than were slain by the Deep waterer Horizon oil spill with the road deaths accompanied by a fraction of the hand ringing and it's only getting worse as traffic swells a half century ago just 3% of land dwelling mammals met their end on a road by 2017 the toll had quadrupled it has never been more dangerous to set paw hoof or scaly belly on the highway I find that to be so extraordinary and is a great way to to start first of all because it is so true right that that the roads and the car as you really you tell these these really fun little stories even thinking about how the car the Advent of the car changed a whole way a a a male Suitor would Court his girlfriend um and and just how we think about I mean when I was growing up way back when um it was it was Freedom car equal Freedom everyone wanted to get their license I actually Wonder as we go through this conversation I sometimes think cars are now less important and the phone people's freedom right so I wonder how how that'll affect things as as we have this larger conversation but we'll we'll wait for that for later um so you talk a lot and you've already spoken a lot about migration right and I feel like as most people who are watching the show pretty educated uh people out there you know teachers Librarians curious people so we we know what migration is but you take a moment in your book to talk about about what migration is in case maybe we didn't fully understand the depth and the span of migration um and I I'm hoping you could just take a moment to explain what is migration to Define migration for us as we think about your book and contextualize it that's a that's a a lovely a lovely question so migration is essentially a it's a it's a kind of a seasonal movement between two points or two habitats you know that the idea is that you know the world has all of these kind of ephemeral resources you know uh that pop up at different times of year and animals have to move between them so you know humpback whales which migrate between these big schools of Herring that occur in Alaska in the in the summer and then they go to Hawaii in the winter to give birth in the you know the warm ocean right they have different needs at different times of year and planet is providing different resources at different times of year so migration is really this ingenious life strategy it's a way of accessing those different things that you need as a as a wild animal you know your food and your breeding grounds and um you know those and you have to move between those those different locations of course uh and you know again for millions of years right this was an amazing effective strategy uh you know song birds migrate from Canadian boreal forests to Central America and and Caribou you know migrate across the tundra uh and that's that works really well on an unroad planet right the problem is that roads now get in their way and you know and Roads impede that movement in a couple of different ways I mean first of course is road kill you know an animal that gets hit by a a car is not uh you know not likely to survive its migration of course uh you know and and then the second reason is you know roads create this barrier effect uh you know you have these dense streams of traffic cruising down interstate highways you know and that traffic can be so thick that animals don't even attempt uh to to walk across that that road and you know that that barrier effect that loss of migration can actually be more dangerous in some ways than roadkill itself in the in the book I tell the story of mule deer in Wyoming uh you know these these big herds of migratory deer that need to walk down to these low elevation valleys where they can find food year round because they're not covered in snow in Wyoming uh and that migration route is cut off partially by Interstate 80 uh and you know there's where the pool against the interstate waiting for an opportunity to cross the highway which never comes because the traffic is so steady uh and you know those deer sometimes starve you know 40% of that that Muer herd can starve in a single winter and and you know in some ways that's worse than roadkill itself right that herd can you know they can handle uh a few collisions uh you know what they can't handle is is the loss of all of that habitat created by the the barrier effect so roads have really made migration this ancient life way uh increasingly challenging well it was really interesting in your book that you you outline or you you put forth that a lot of the Wagon Wheel the wagon uh roads uh they were really inscribed those roads were inscribed by herds of animals and so I I really started thinking how we we humans took over the migratory ways and so here they you know for thousands of years and you've pointed right this is how they went this is how they went to their do what they did and now all of a sudden they go to do and it's a paved Road um and and I thought that was a really interesting point because I I I never thought about it um when um when I was when we drive around as we we like I'd never seen an AR armadillo I don't know I I actually didn't realize that there were armadillos in like Mississippi Alabama but we were driving to New Orleans and there were tons I mean tons of dead armadillos on the on the side of the road did you do any studying of armadillos or I mean is even did you see any research as you were writing this book because I was intrigued by it yeah that's that's funny you know it's funny I was just in in Texas this this um this past spring uh writing a story about um about ocelots and and and roadkill unfortunately ocelots you know there about 80 ocelots left in in Texas and roadkill is the kind of the primary source of mortality for them um there really an existential threat so I was I was down there in Texas you know theoretically writing about ocelotes but like you I was seeing all of these armadillos live ones fortunately on all of the the dirt roads where the uh where the ocelots live and you know I was driving around with this this wildlife biologist studying the ocelots and I kept asking him to stop for armadillos so I could take armadillo photos and he was like enough with the armad dillas you know we these are like these are like you know groundhogs or woodchucks or something we see them everywhere um but I was just obsessed with the armad dillas uh so I totally I totally understand that that impulse to notice AR it's funny I think it's also where we're from because I think you're from originally from New York as I'm as am I so Upstate New York so I think it's part of that right right yeah I think it is armadillos are exotic for for us um but you know you know I think I think that one of the interesting things that armadillos speak to uh in some ways is is how roadkill and cars in particular kind of subvert animals evolutionary history right that you know you think about all of the the common wild animals that we love uh and they all have these kind of stand your ground defense strategies right a turtle withdrawing into its into its H its shell or you know a porcupine bristling its quills or a skunk spraying right or an armadillo which has a shell and also armadillos jump uh in the face of of danger which is a strange thing that you don't really picture from an armadillo uh you know and these are all evolutionary strategies that were honed by you know thousands of generations of escaping coyotes and foxes and Hawks and all of these wild predators and they work really well against those wild Predators but they don't work well uh you know against an F250 you know barreling at 70 miles an hour down an interstate highway right they're actually the worst thing you could possibly do you should flee from a car not hunker down against it so that's I think one of the tragedies of of roadkill and one of the the the the reasons that roadkill became so severe with the Advent of the car very quickly uh is because cars you know they have this way of hijacking thousands of generations of of evolution and I I find that really tragic and armadilla uh epitomize that in in some ways so anyway yeah seeing all those aradillas that's a that's a pretty it's a pretty sad site it was it certainly was um you discuss in the book The the moving fence um and you go into why highways destroy animal Migration we talked a little bit about it but I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the moving fence and and the role that Wildlife Crossings play in Reviving animal Migration yeah that's a it's a great great question so the moving fence is this it's this this um phenomenon a term coined by biologist in the 1970s and you know what they observed um in the in the 70s is is that over time deer collisions on these interstate highways actually went down dramatically and and so basically what you know what what in the in the starting the 60s and and early 70s you know there's this huge surge of interest in studying deer collisions right deer you know are increasing all over the United States um thanks in part to the suburbs which are created by by cars uh you know dear suburbs are great deer habitat uh and meanwhile you know there are all these big new interstate highways being built all over the country so know Americans are driving farther and faster than ever and meanwhile there are more you know 150 pound large mammals uh getting in the way uh and you know deer collisions become this this big National crisis in in some ways and and uh there are researchers who are assigned to essentially study why this is happening and how that can be prevented how do we stop people from hitting deer um which is still a huge question that rodic colist are are engaged in um so you know one of the things that they document is that at the start and they're there's one team of scientists that's studying this this interstate highway uh in Pennsylvania uh I I80 uh and what they what they find is that at first when when the interstate first goes in there there are lots and lots of deer collisions you know I mean there are dozens and dozens in in you know a matter of weeks uh and it's this incredibly dangerous stretch of highway for both drivers and and deer but over time what what begins to happen is that de collisions decline um almost to almost to zero and it's it's sort of perplexing but what they figure out is not that there aren't there are still just as many deer but traffic has gone up so high the deer no longer even attempt to cross the highway right so they're not getting killed because they just don't bother trying to cross uh and that's the moving fence you know is this steady stream of traffic uh that prevents animals from moving across the road altogether and you know as as we discussed that can be almost as problematic or more problematic for animals than roadkill right if you if you lose all of that habitat because you don't even try to cross the highway that's a huge a huge crisis so the solution to that are Wildlife Crossings you know these overpasses and underpasses flanked with roadside fences that guide the animals to The Crossings uh that allow Wildlife to to safely move across across these highways and you know Wildlife crossings they kind of first start popping up in the 1970s in places like uh Utah and Wyoming and Colorado and you know now there are probably a few thousand of them uh in the United States and more being built all the time and they work incredibly well uh you know they they animals find them they use them they learn to use them more over time they teach their own offspring to use them in in some cases and you know these Crossings are really effective at preventing collisions you know they actually pay for themselves in many cases by preventing all of these dangerous crash es between drivers and deer and elk and moose and other large dangerous Critters uh so Wildlife Crossings through this great technology uh that uh you know is sort of the best tool at our disposal to address this Wildlife vehicle collision and habitat connectivity crisis that we've created with our our highways so I I think that's a really helpful um thing to understand I also think that we know that those Animal Crossings must not be cheap I also liked how in your book you really point out right in all I think it was 8 billion a year is spent on um on things related to animal crashes yeah you talk a lot about the the Nugget can Canon underpass and how a few people were able to make this compelling fiscal analysis to be able to to to build an underpass can you talk a little bit about that situation and ALS also maybe how that success or being able to make this financial it's really a policy monetary fiscal argument has impacted other places as well yeah good good question so one of the interesting things about the history of these Wild Life Crossings is that is that you know most of the early ones especially are in the American West and the reason for that is that you know in the in so in the eastern US you know they are just white tail deer all over the place right and you know anybody who's ever driven around you know Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York you know has seen of course thousands of white tailed deer just hanging out everywhere right and as a result it's you know it's historically been difficult to know where to put a wildlife Crossing if the deer are just all over the place uh whereas in the west you know because the climate is Harsh and the animals have to migrate between resources seasonally as we talked about you know there are these big migratory herds that follow these very predictable Pathways going to you know winter winter valleys and and water sources and you know kind of the Upland habitats in the spring right animals just migrate along these very consistent uh routs uh and that makes it easy to know where to put a wild wildlife Crossing because you know when you have you know 5,000 mu deer crossing a highway in the same place every single year well you know the the carcasses unfortunately start to add up right and there's there are very these very clear discreet hotspots of collision so you know exactly where to put a Crossing uh and that was that was the case um in nugget Canyon in the 1930s this this spot on Highway 30 in Wyoming where you know thousands of deer migrated every year collisions were just an epidemic there and uh you know and Engineers with the w Department of Transportation eventually put in uh a half dozen or so underpasses these big kind of box culs the deer could walk through with fences between them and you know those those structures were incredibly effective and they prevented so many crashes that again they they very quickly paid for themselves in about five years I think uh and you know the reason for that is that deer collisions are really dangerous events right you know today the average deer Collision costs more than $99,000 in hospital bills and vehicle repairs and insurance costs and tow trucks and all the different expenses associated with these crashes so you know by preventing dozens of crashes a year you know these these structures which together cost you know several million dollars actually recoup their own construction costs and that you know that finding that Wildlife Crossings uh are are self-funding essentially uh and that's been repeat in in many different places you know that that's been shown in in Colorado and Arizona and all over all over the uh the American West now and there you know there were Crossings being built for uh for animals in the east as well it's not just a western technology anymore although that's sort of how it how it began so those those you know those early Wyoming Wildlife Crossings were just hugely influential in getting more of these things built so we have the crossings but then there's also the America's largest Wildlife Bridge as well as I had no idea uh tow tunnels frog shuttles Turtle sausages you know why are these important and and also you know can you talk a little bit about them because I know right the largest Wildlife Bridge saved the biggest cats in right cats in our country right and or an isolated you know group uh can you talk a little bit about some of these different um things that are used in order to mitigate the problem and um just a story or two to share that's in your book yeah ABS absolutely so that that that giant Wildlife bridge for for mountain lions is that's a that's a a structure that's being built right now and will will be completed in 2025 uh and you know the story there really illustrates the the dangers of roads in a lot of ways so there's this population of mountain lions that lives very close to Los Angeles in in the Santa Monica Mountains uh and you know those animals are surrounded by some of the biggest busiest freeways on Earth you know the 101 the 405 you know these these freeways that have hundreds of thousands of cars on every single day and are you know nearly a complete barrier to animal movement and as a result you know this little population of mountain lines is just trapped in this kind of island of habitat and in a sea of freeways and development and as a result you know they can't disperse out right so there are you know young male mountain lions who want to go find their own territories but they can't leave the island and you know their own fathers kill them in some cases uh and just as harmful no new mountain lions can come in right there's there's no way of refreshing the genan pool and as a result uh you know male mountain lions have breed with their own daughters and granddaughters and great granddaughters there's kind of this crazy Tangled family tree that's that's leading to genetic defects and and um you know will ultimately cause the extinction of this population of mountain lions if if nothing's done so and in response to this uh you know there's there's the sort of the state with all of this private philanthropic help uh is building what's going to be America's largest Wildlife Crossing this incredible uh bridge and overpass the Wallace anenberg Wildlife crossing that's going to connect this little cluster of mountain lions with genetic reinforcement elsewhere in California so that the cats can theoretically go back and forth and mate and again refresh that gene pool and and that's really exciting uh because again it is this enormous project um you know it's it's galvanizing lots of media attention and interest and certainly he going to inspire many other projects elsewhere in the country and and uh and really around the world I think uh ultimately and it's you know it's it's it's a really challenging project in a lot of ways right it's I mean the structure itself is enormous but there's also the fact fact that uh you know the the freeway causes so much noise and light pollution that you know animals uh often have a hard time even approaching the the freeway so you know how do you create burms and vegetated screens and other architectural elements that that blunt some of that noise in light pollution and make the crossing more enticing to wild animals that's a a big design question that uh you know the Landscape Architects who have worked on this thing have spent a lot of time thinking about you know it's also it's not just mountain lions even though they're kind of the the Flagship species for this project there're also coyotes and bobcats and lizards and birds and all kinds of other creatures that all need to be able to cross this freeway safely and you have to think about their habitat requirements as well so they're really building this entirely new ecosystem uh at top this freeway which is just a an incredibly exciting uh event and a landmark in the annals of of Road ecology it's incredible um so let's move on to the US the US Forest Service they operate the world's largest Road Network to my surprise who knew um can you discuss it and and what is happening there yeah so the to the forest service right we we don't you know we often look at a you know if if you looked at a big National map um of our national forests you know zoomed way out right you just see these big green blobs with the you know the occasional Highway running through them and you would think well these are you know these areas are mostly roadless but the exact opposite is true uh you know the forest service has the world's largest Road Network as as you pointed out Heather it's uh close to 400,000 miles and you know most of those roads are Old Logging roads and firefighting roads you know roads that were built in some cases of century ago that that are you know have largely outlived whatever initial purpose they served and and you know they have very little traffic um and they're you know the vast majority are unpaved uh and you know you'd think that a a low traffic dirt road would be benign you know it wouldn't it's certainly not like a big interstate highway with you know 20,000 cars every day you know what impact could a little dirt road in the middle of nowhere really have but you know lots of research shows that those those little dirt roads uh are hugely uh detrimental to to uh to Nature in a lot of ways you know and one of the biggest ones is that they're you know they they kind of hemorrhage sediment you know you get a big uh a big rain event or a big snow melt event in the spring uh you know all this water kind of cascading down these mountains and you know all those dirt roads uh basically liquefy and Trigger these kind of catastrophic landslides and erosion events and all of that you know that liquefied earth goes racing Downstream and it pours into creeks and it Smothers all of these uh trout and salmon spawning grounds and kills amphibia larv uh so you know even a dirt road is not is not a benign feature it's it still has H really serious impacts and you know the forest service and various environmental groups have done a lot of work trying to obliterate those roads with heavy machinery just taking a you know an excavator in there and chewing up the road and replanting it and trying to return it to Nature and you know that can work pretty well uh you know the problem is that costs money you know when the forest service is is stretched pretty thin uh fighting fires and uh you know and and repairing its existing infrastructure and you know doing all this stuff uh so you know we we've we've unbuilt our infrastructure in some places in national forests but uh you know we really need to reduce that road density much further if we're going to create these big secure patches of habitat for all kinds of Critters so we've been talking a lot about big animals for the most part um and and I was hoping we could talk a little bit about butterflies and because I think whereas a deer could be controversial I've heard people talk about them as pests you'd think they were almost rats I how people get very upset about deer wrecking their Garden right um butterflies and the Monarch right those are they're important pollinators and we know that bad things are happening to them if we could talk about the role that roads are playing in their migration yeah it's it's a really interesting dynamic because you know for the monarch butterfly I mean they' they've lost so much of their habitat right monarch butterflies need milkweed in particular that's the only plant that their caterpillars eat uh and you know most of the milkweed in in the midwest where kind of the main population of monarch butterflies migrate uh has been lost to you know corn and soy and these big agricultural monocultures uh and The Last Remnant strips of of of native Prairie in many cases are found along roadsides you know those are the kind of the last quasi wild uncultivated places and you know in many Midwestern states roadsides are actually the largest form of public land uh and they've become these these reservoirs of of habitat for for butterflies and in particular the I35 which runs from Minnesota to Texas uh you know by coincidence almost perfectly parallels uh the the kind of central Flyway of the the migrating monarch butterfly uh and you know a lot of State dos Department Departments of Transportation in the midwest have come together to kind of Rebrand that the the Monarch Highway and said they're going to do things to kind of manage those those those Road sides to create good habitat for butterflies uh and that's promising except for the fact that of course you know a road is still a really dangerous place right and and you know millions of Monarch butterflies are killed by cars uh every year we don't really think about insects as being Road killed but you know certainly they they get uh hammered in enormous numbers and you know you could imagine that luring butterflies to the roadside with with milked and other other flowers that they sip nectar from you know could be really dangerous right you could be creating what scientists call an ecological trap you know this place that sucks animals in and and then then harms them uh so you there's a lot of research being done right now to figure out uh you know okay if if we're going to use these roadsides as habitat uh you know what can we do to make them better basically can we plant them in different places that are farther from the road uh so that not as many butterflies get hit can we you know mow them uh at different times of year to make the the milkweed more productive for the the monarch caterpillars you know how can we manage these roadsides to maximize their habitat value and minim minimize the risk that uh that they're creating to uh to Butterfly so that that tension between uh you know habitat provision and and the dangers of the road um is a a really fascinating one and and one that I explore in in one chapter of this book your book also points out the collapse of migration leads to endangerment of the whole biological process as Citizens I mean there's citizen science like what what can we do what can we do for Community engagement for citizen science is there a role we can play in in making this better glad you asked that yeah so you know citizen science or or participatory science or volunteer science whatever you want to call it is is one great way of of engaging in this issue right we're all driving around out there noticing roadkill or I guess most of the time we're not noticing it but you know we could start noticing it we're driving past it certainly uh and you know we're all potentially data collectors you know and there there are lots of great um again these these kind of participatory science apps uh you know that allow you to log the roadkill the location and species that you see and you know that data uh can be really useful there are a couple of great examples in California where there's a a system called the California roadkill observation system a fantastic uh app that allows people to record their sightings where that data has actually identified roadkill hotspots uh and has led to the creation of wildlife Crossings um you know the same thing happened in in British Columbia where you know a bunch of a bunch of H volunteer scientists uh kind of Campus the roadside you know identifying deer and elk and big horn sheep and moose all of these animals that were being hit provided that data uh you know to the provincial government and that resulted in fences in a wildlife Crossing so you know there are great ways of of engaging in this issue as as participatory scientists uh and I'd add too that there you know there there are great ways of engaging in it on a political level right one of the one of the exciting things that's happening right now uh is that in the the 2021 infrastructure act included 350 million dollars for new Wildlife Crossings uh and a lot of different states have have passed their own bills uh allocating State funding to to Crossings as well so there's there's all of this new money uh for wildlife crossings that you know that didn't exist a couple of years ago uh and you know states are in the process right now of figuring out how to spend that funding uh and you know there's there's an opportunity to be engaged in that process I think to you know to to call your your uh your legislators you know and say and say Hey you know I I I think that we need more funding for these structures or you know maybe there's a you know maybe there's a a site that's really important to your community you know a roadkill hotspot that maybe uh you know the state do doesn't know about yet um that you could alert them to so there just there are ways of of being involved in this issue uh both as participatory scientists and also as advocates uh you know reaching out to to state legislatures and getting them to support this uh this really important issue no those are all really helpful and really important for our viewers to think about well um in October on October 16th and 17th PBS premieres the American buffalo of film by Ken Burns and and B basically that film traces the American buffalo from the brink of Extinction to really coming back which now as they try to bring it back to a new a new um a new road to Colony right are there any what what do you think is there any any anything you saw in relation to the the American buffalo while you did your research um any challenges that you think they'll face as they're they're bringing the American buff flow um it's having you know not from the they're not being extinct anymore they're they're thriving obviously in a more controlled space What are what are some of your thoughts yeah that's a that's a a great a great question I mean certainly you know bison need uh huge Landscapes to move across and and you know and Roads could certainly uh interfere with that and you know you could also Imagine you know the Bison I mean look I'm certainly all for rewilding the the Bison all over the place um you know I'm very very Pro bison um but uh you know you could also imagine that that creating a you know danger situation for drivers as well right um you know I mean a bison you know if hitting a deer is dangerous and expensive you know imagine what it's like hitting hitting a bison um so you know I think that's that's probably more rationale for building Wildlife Crossings right if we're going to bring back this iconic native migratory species uh as we absolutely should because you know in part because it's so foundational to you know so many native tribes uh you know well we should we should that's that's all the more rationale to create safer highways for both uh people and and animals and you know I'd add too that you mentioned earlier in this conversation that you know so many so many of our highways follow what were historically animal Trails right that you know first first they were animal Trails then they were Native foot paths then they were wagon roads then they were gravel roads then they became inter States uh you know and in many cases the animals creating those Trails were bison you know these huge creatures that migrate in enormous herds and you know are moving seasonally between resources and are going to Salt Licks uh and creating these really enormous paths through the landscape and it's amazing to read some of you know some early Trapper and Explorer uh Diaries and journals you know where they describe these Buffalo Trails where you know 10 men could walk up breast uh you know through the through the Prairie on the the trails that the Bison have have have beaten so you know in some ways bison are are you know they're foundational to our transportation network uh in in really interesting ways and you know and and that makes it all the more ironic that our transportation Network gets in the way of you know their movements and other other animal movements today I want to talk briefly about your process so although non-fiction your book reads like a story it's historical information Diaries stories comments from biologists personal comments from biologists um and lots of sprinkled in modern day statistics I'm really interested to know how you developed um your your book like chapters to tell this story what what's your creative process how did you go about this yeah that's a that's a a big a big question I mean certainly you know at the at the outset it's just lots and lots of interviews you know I'm talking to as many rist as I could find you know I attended some rology conferences you know looking looking for people working on this issue at The Cutting Edge uh and you know just trying to figure out um first you know who's doing exciting work of course you know you don't want you don't want redundant work right so you know if you have a chapter about researchers working on Muer migrations in Wyoming you know you probably don't also want one about Muer migrations in Nevada even though those are just as you they're equally important but you know you don't want to um you know you don't want to be too redundant obviously for your the sake of your your reader and you know and then I was really looking for researchers who would take me into the field right that's a I think that's a really important piece of this is you know is experiencing these animals and these roads on the ground personally you know that's that's something that I I love as a writer and you know I think helps to put the reader in the scene you know as you as you pointed out I think the book is you know it's it's certainly scene based and it's you know they're great characters and I hope it's fun to read uh and you know I think the way you achieve that is actually going to these places and having these experiences yourself uh or your or myself um and so you know I was I was looking for researchers who'd be willing to invite me into their world a little bit you know to take me out uh you know to the to the the deserts of Wyoming or the the the Savannah of Brazil or you know or or the the bush of Tasmania you know all places that I I went uh working on this book so I spent lots of time just talking to to scientists and kind of evaluating their willingness to host me um and you know and whether what they were doing was going to be interesting on the on the page U because you know you could imagine that you know that that putting a a satellite color on a mu deer in in the Wyoming desert is very exciting but you know maybe like evaluating traffic rates from a computer uh you know is is less so right so I'm just looking for people who are who are willing to have me uh and whose work is going to make uh a compelling narrative and you know and fortunately I was I was really lucky to find those people you know there were just so many um researchers and Advocates and citizen scientists who were willing to invite me into their their worlds and spend time with me over the course of these several years uh and that was that's just one of the great gifts and privileges of being a jerk is that that your sources really gener or at least they've been to me and I'm I'm incredibly appreciative of that well your book certainly is fun to read what do you want readers to take away yeah you know I I think that I I I would love readers to take I would love readers to leave this book seeing our world in a different way you know I think I think that's one of the challenges of Road ecology is that roads are so familiar to us that they're almost invisible you know we drive on them every single day and as a result we ignore or or overlook uh the toll they take on on nature you know and when we do think about them you know we associate them with freedom and mobility and movement you know just as as I mentioned in that passage you know that quoted Bruce Springstein right uh you know born to Born to Run and Thunder Road you know those are some some of my favorite songs uh you know that celebrate the open Highway um and and so I you know I think that I'd love readers to leave this book recognizing that you know the freedom and Mobility that roads have provided us uh has done the exact opposite to wild animals right they they've curtailed movement at a a mass scale and I think we don't often think about that or notice that um but you know certainly it's it's the case and you know and my hope is that readers leave this book recognizing the toll that Roads Take seeing roads in a new way and also recognizing that you know that we're not entirely without Solutions you know we have this giant four million Mile Road Network that's creating ecological Havoc um and yet there are things we can do to to mitigate those impacts so we're not entirely bere of solutions either well I certainly think that if if a reader gets your book and reads it they will certainly get that out of it it totally changed my perspective um and I I really enjoyed reading that while I have you here I think it's important to discuss your award-winning book eager the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter so for those of you out there who don't know uh PBS yes recently there was a program on PBS about beavers Great Lakes now which focuses on the Great Lakes um they've convened a group of people to talk about beavers your book is well recognized um what what motivated you to explore the significance of beavers and what were some of your most surprising findings yeah they just you know they just came to me in a dream one night no I don't I don't know I I I've always I always love beavers I you know I grew up in I grew up in New York and spent a lot of time in the cat skills and adex uh around beavers you know fishing camping canoeing hiking uh so I always loved Loved These Critters uh and then you know in in 2013 or 14 or so I was I was living in Seattle uh you know working as a journalist looking for things to write about and I I caught wind of this Beaver Workshop that was happening outside of Seattle and I you know I had no idea what a beaver Workshop was but it sounded like it could be a cool story so I went to this workshop and it was just one scientist after another getting up to say their piece about why beavers were so important right of course beavers build dams they create ponds and wetlands and those ponds and wetlands have so many vital ecological roles and functions you know they create amazing salmon habitat they provide fire breaks that stop the spread of destructive wildfires they filter out pollution they store water in the face of drought they you know capture destructive flood waters they sequester carbon they do all of this incredible stuff uh and it was so it was just one again it was just one scientist after another getting up to talk about all of these different ecosystem benefits uh that uh that that Beaver ponds provide and and I I realized that day that this you know this very familiar rodent that i' kind of grown up with uh wasn't just you know a cute little critter it was one of the Prime movers and shakers and architects of North American Landscapes uh so it was really that it was that little workshop or conference that that just got me thinking about beavers in a different way and then I spent you know as I did with this book I spent several years uh you know traveling around uh around the country and even the world uh you know meeting researchers working on beavers and and uh writing about all of the different ways in which bringing back these amazing animals can help uh help restore our landscapes well that's extraordinary and thank you for sharing eager for those of you who don't know this the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter but really here we're today we're discussing this fantastic book cross scenes um a few things what are you currently working on um yeah I I think I'm I'm mostly working on talking about this book right now um you know that's that's taking up lot a lot of my time as as well it should it's you know it's it's I I certainly think it's an important topic and and you know now so much of my effort is uh is is in getting the word at about uh about this book and about the the importance of the the topic uh I don't have a next book um on my plate just yet but I I'll certainly uh happily take viewers suggestions so just you know email me and tell me what I should be writing about do you have I always ask um our our feature guess if they have a favorite library because libraries usually play such an important role in in writers and their love for learning wow that's I I love that question I so two two that I'll name first is is my my current Public Library CID Public Library uh in in CA Colorado where where where I live and and gave gave a a rology talk recently they they very graciously hosted me that's a wonderful library system and just staffed by incredibly uh ful and friendly people and then I'll also shout out Hastings public library and Hastings on Hudson where I where I grew up uh and that's just you know a beautiful library has the best Hudson River views in of any library in the world I think uh it's just a spectacular place that you know fostered my love of learning and is is H is staffed by uh or run by my my dear friend Debbie Quinn today who just does a phenomenal job with uh with programming and it's just a a great advocate for um for reading and children's literature in particular um so Hastings Hastings Public Library love those guys well thank you so much for your time thank you for your book and for sharing your insights it's truly extraordinary I know I've learned a lot I I'm sure our viewers have as well um so Ben thank you so much and I look forward to hearing about what your next project is yeah I look forward to having one and thank you so much Heather Heather for having me on all right well we always like to thank our library partners and Museum Partners uh more than 2,000 strong across the country as well as numerous PBS stations across our nation most importantly we'd like to thank our viewers for being there just a reminder PBS one of their new priorities is climate and the environment so if you have any questions certainly go to PBS.org to learn more until next time I'm Heather Marie montia and and happy [Music] reading [Music]