Book Club Discussion on Crossings How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future Register

Date and Time:
Tue, Jan 7, 2025; 7:00 PM (Central)

Organized By: Wisconsin Chapter

Location: Virtual

Event Organizers:
Cassie Steiner
   cassandra.steiner@sierraclub.org

The Sierra Club Wisconsin Chapter’s book club is back again for 2024 with plenty of great reads. We meet from 7 - 8 pm on the *first Tuesday evening of every other month (on odd months) and we’d love for you to join us! *The date of this discussion is pushed back by one week to avoid election day.

January  7, 2025: Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb 
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. 



Please join us for as many book club reads as you would like, and feel free to drop in even if you haven't finished the book or are only able to attend one discussion during the year. Books are selected from a list of recommendations from book club attendees. 

Contact Cassie at cassie.steiner@sierraclub.org with questions.