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The Trouble with Roads [1]

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Date: 2025-01-29

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

In the United States, about one million animals are killed by cars every day. Many of them are deer, squirrels, opossums and raccoons, the critters that are often found skulking near suburban and rural roads. Of course, rarer animals are hit, too: the only time I’ve ever seen a bobcat it was flattened and glued to the side of a road somewhere in Idaho.

Most people avert their eyes from the carcasses that dot America’s roads, but I have a hard time looking away. Bearing witness to our collective violence toward animals feels like the least I can do.

Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb’s book “Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet” talks all about this. Roads, he argues, don’t just harm the animals that get hit on them; they wreak havoc on the habitats they segment, creating isolated animal populations (think about Southern California’s mountain lions, divided by the 101 highway) and confused songbirds that can’t hear potential mates over road noise. Studies have found that cortisol levels – stress hormones – in animals that live near roads are heightened (just like humans!)

This is what I was thinking about as I made the 10-hour drive from my home in northwest Oregon to Elko, Nevada, earlier this week. I was mainly traveling on two-lane highways where the speed limit ranges from 50 to 75 miles per hour, and on two occasions I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting birds. I saw dozens of carcasses, including two coyotes laying side-by-side in what I could only imagine was the tragic killing of a mating pair or perhaps a parent and child. It’s easy for me to get sad on a drive like that.

I don’t really know what we can do about it, either. There’s the obvious answer to drive less, but for many people – especially those in rural areas who have no other transportation option – this just isn’t feasible. There’s the other answer to drive slower (I like this answer), but tell that to the truck drivers that have daily mileage quotas to meet or road trippers eager to get to their hotel at the end of a long day’s drive. Because our cars can drive fast, there’s not a lot of incentive to slow down.

There are some efforts to build wildlife crossings over roads to allow animals safe passage. The largest wildlife crossings project in the country is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025 over Highway 101, letting the aforementioned California mountain lions more safely expand their territory.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration has a grant program that states can apply for to fund similar crossings projects, but the future of this program is uncertain: the new Trump Administration announced a temporary freeze on all federal grants and loan disbursements, which was then, temporarily, blocked by a federal judge.

Regardless, the money coming from these programs isn’t nearly enough to significantly reduce the number of animals hit on roads, it can only target hot spot areas where animals are frequently hit.

Like most of our environmental problems, a long-term solution usually requires a larger societal change, one that I don’t foresee happening anytime soon with our roads.

For now, I’ll just keep scanning the hills for animals and driving slowly.

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