Voice One  0:00  
I'm Pedro grandes from Fresno, California, and you're listening to the wild idea. 

Bill Hodge 

Welcome to stories for a wild and connected world. This is what we like to call the wild idea podcast. I am one of your hosts, Bill Hodge, along with my good buddy and friend, Enders Reynolds, we bring you a passion for wild places and a passion for wild ideas, and we love to explore stories at that intersection of wild nature and human nature. Together, we also bring a combined 30 plus years. Can you believe that 30 plus year track record of fighting for land protections and land stewardship today, we are joined by the great environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb for what I'm sure will be a wide ranging conversation, including the discussion of his book crossings, how road ecology is shaping the future of our planet. But first, Anders, you seem pretty pumped today.

Anders Reynolds  0:52  
Oh, hi, Bill. Oh, man, I'm really pumped. What a fitting day to be talking about roads. This episode is going to air on December 2. Do you know what turns 45 years old on December 2? Bill 45 that's in the rear view mirror for you. You must be jealous.

Bill Hodge  1:09  
I am and I don't. I'm drawing a blank. What is 45 years old today?

Anders Reynolds  1:15  
ANILCA or the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on December 2, 1980 and when I say that's a big deal, I mean, it's a big deal. Anilka is the single biggest expansion of public lands in American history. It doubled the size of the national park system at the time and between all the different designations included in the bill, it offered protection to 157 million acres of land. But perhaps most relevant to our conversation today, it established the 9 million acre Wrangell St Elias wilderness area, the single largest contiguous roadless area in the United States. That's a big deal.

Bill Hodge  2:07  
Scale is always so different when we talk about Alaska, 9 million acres. I, as we've talked on other episodes, I love the Bob Marshall wilderness complex, 1.6 million acres. But to picture 9 million acres of that Rangel st Elias wilderness is just mind blowing. And also, let me just say, oh, to be 45 again.

Anders Reynolds  2:31  
You know, we often talk about acres. I can barely imagine what an acre. It's so funny. We use the word acre, which is almost never used in sort of like, land measurement, except for, like, the sort of thing we talk about. So to imagine, you know, 9 million acres is just an incredible it's huge. How many Montana's is that? Do we know, off the top of our head, I don't off the top of my head, is it half of Montana? Two Montana's?

Bill Hodge  2:56  
It's about the size of Connecticut. If I remember, right, 9 million acres is about the size of Connecticut. Wow. So imagine a wilderness the size of Connecticut. But I this also makes me realize, and this a conversation we've is probably overdue for us to have, is too many people in our space and our love of wild lands and wild places use acres as a measurement, right? I mean, going back for a long time, it was like donors wanted to know, well, how many acres are you going to protect? And you and I know as creatures of the South. I mean, I live in Montana now, but as guys from the south, sometimes it's not the acres, it's what's in the acres, right? You and I were a part of protecting the upper bald river wilderness. That's 10,000 acres, but probably one of the most biodiversity rich places on the planet, like 23 different species of salamanders. Acres are cool, and it is fun to picture or try to picture 9 million acres, but there are so many other measures that matter when it comes to wildland protections, right?

Anders Reynolds  3:53  
So many You're right. It's totally about quality over quantity. And I think that's probably never been more true than it is right now, when we've got, you know, the threat of climate change breathing down our neck, moving where these biodiverse areas are going to be in the next few years. I mean, it's, it's really about smarter conservation, not about it's not about size bill.

Bill Hodge  4:15  
It's not about size. Thank you Lord. I will say we talk about acres. So I'd have to again, illustrate how beautiful the Wilderness Preservation System is. 9 million acre wrangle st Elias is in the same system as the six acre Pelican Island wilderness. So there, there's a range for you. And Pelican Island is manageable, because guess what? It's an island of six acres. And I think that's it. I think that's at high tide. So any rate it's it's always fun to talk about the National Wilderness Preservation System. Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist whose work has appeared in National Geographic, the Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The New Yorker, lots of places. He's the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award for Excellence in environmental writing and the bay. Up for book competition's grand prize. Ben, welcome to the wild idea. Hey.

Ben Goldfarb  5:05  
Thank you guys so much for having me. And I'm sorry I cannot resolve the acre debate. I don't really know what an acre is. And if you get into talking about acre feet in the world of Western water, then it gets really crazy. So I'll have to stay out of that one.

Anders Reynolds  5:17  
Yeah, fair enough. Thanks so much for being here today. Let's talk about something you do know about your book crossings. That book is about how road ecology is shaping our planet, and really how roads are sort of the gateway drug to ecological devastation. What drew you to explore this topic? My understanding is that you came to the work via wildlife crossings. But maybe I have that wrong, and even if I don't, what held your attention as you delved into the science behind it all? Yeah, I think,

Ben Goldfarb  5:49  
I think you're broadly right that wildlife crossings were part of how I got excited about this topic. And I think there are really two answers, you know. One is that, as an environmental journalist, you know, I've spent my career writing about various forms of ecological degradation, and roads are always at the heart of those forms of degradation. Right before you can illegally log the Amazon, you know you need a road network to get the machinery in and the logs out before you can drill for oil and gas. You know you need a road network before you can, you know, turn an acre of habitat into a subdivision, or several acres of habitat into a subdivision? You know, you need a road network, right? So roads were always kind of in, lurking in the background of the topics I was, I was writing about as a journalist there, you know, as my dumb little pun in the book is that they're the roots, R, O, U, T, E, S, of all evil, right? There they're kind of at the at the heart of so much of what we've done to the planet. And so, you know, here was this omnipresent problem that I found myself writing about. And then in 2013 I had the chance to tour some wildlife crossings on highway 93 north of Missoula, not too far from where I think Bill is, where, you know, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes had really pushed the state of Montana and the federal government to install about 40 of these crossings for bears and deer and elk and all of the critters that were so that are so foundational to their their culture. And you know, the opportunity to stand atop a wildlife overpass as the Montana sun was setting on a beautiful October night, and think about the, you know, the grizzly bears who are going to emerge in a couple hours to use this thing. It was just incredibly beautiful and inspiring and exciting. And so it was that opportunity to see the one of the solutions to this omnipresent problem I'd been writing about for a long time. I think that was really what got me fired up.

Anders Reynolds  7:44  
Yeah, what's fascinating about your book is just how deeply you are able to incriminate roads. You know, a lot of the questions I have for you today are about the ways, as you mentioned, they carve up ecosystems into little islands and become such significant barriers to species movement. But the problems are so much deeper than that, deeper than I could imagine when I started the book. You know, as one example, you mentioned the damage from tire particles for one thing, and you in you note the way that roads, and in particular, cars, force animals like the RIN tit into a sort of contracted natural selection. Were you surprised by how many impacts you found roads have on the land and the species that rely on it?

Speaker 1  8:29  
Yeah, it's there are so many connections or disconnections that roads forge with nature. You know, you mentioned those tire particles. Is a great example of that. You know, tire particles contain a chemical known as six PPD, this obscure chemical nobody ever heard of. It's there as an ozone protection agent, and that turns out to be killing coho salmon in the Puget Sound watershed. You know, at a pretty massive scale. Another kind of improbable or not improbable one, but one that I didn't totally anticipate going into this project was the impact of road noise as this huge ecological disruptor. You know, in the book, I talk about the idea of this, the Phantom road experiment, this project conducted by researchers at Boise State University, where they basically played the noise of traffic through speakers in an unroaded forest in Idaho, and found that migratory songbirds avoided that area, and the ones who did use that that part of the forest were in much worse body condition. Because, you know, if you can't hear the sound of an approaching predator because it's drowned out by road noise, you have to look around constantly instead. And you know, every second that you're looking for a hawk is a second that you're not foraging on insects and berries, right? So those, it's, you know, it's those sorts of sub lethal, perhaps subtle but really profound relationships and and problems that I, you know, I found so striking. And there. Everybody seen the dead deer or elk or bear by the side of the highway, but it's, you know, it's the animals you don't see. I think, who are, who are being almost more harmed in some instances.

Bill Hodge  10:11  
Ben, you know, we started out talking about crossings, but another book of yours that I really love is eager, the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter, and to bounce kind of between the two books, I fundamentally see the two books eager and crossings as connected. They are about infrastructure. Interestingly enough, in the case of crossing, you dive into roads and how they affect the ecological construct. And in eager, you clearly illustrate that beavers are way more like humans. And then some may realize, including they have a serious, and I mean, serious commitment to infrastructure. And I think it's just, it's interesting. I've loved both books, and I want to talk more about your writing later. But like, am I right? Like, fundamentally, there's that core component. They're both about infrastructure.

Speaker 1  11:00  
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. You know, humans and beavers, we're the two animals who are most fanatically driven to micromanage our surroundings, you know, to maximize our own food and shelter. Of course, we do it in a way that is fundamentally deleterious for basically all other life on Earth, right? Whereas they do it in a way that is unbelievably beneficial. Of course, beavers are creating niches for, you know, juvenile salmonids and amphibians and songbirds and waterfowl. And, you know, you practically can't name a species that doesn't benefit from from beavers. You know, some, some way or somehow. So, you know, we're, we're kind of the natural world's two great builders, Homo sapiens and Castor canadensis. But you know, again, we do it in a way that that dominates the planet and and maximizes our own welfare, whereas beavers do it in a way that is, you know, fundamentally beneficial for basically all other forms of life. They're the ultimate keystone species, these animals who are supporting enormous amounts of weight in our ecosystems.

Bill Hodge  12:10  
One thing that stuck out to me about eager is probably the function of most ecosystems started out with the beaver or its predecessors, right? Like the sort of functionality has come from those, I don't know. They're almost like the base builder of of what it takes for these places that not everything relies on a wetland, but, like so many things revolve around the wetland. And there was the beaver creating that long before we decided to disrupt it with roads, right?

Speaker 1  12:41  
So, totally, yeah. I mean, you know, here in Colorado, our iconic endangered amphibian is the boreal Toad, right? Something like 90% of boreal Toad breeding occurs in Beaver ponds. That's a beaver obligate, right? That co evolved with beavers. Or you think about, you know, co host salmon is another, another great example. You know, these fish whose juveniles spend longer in fresh water than than other other salmonids, and really have to seek out those beaver ponds as these nice over winter refuge habitats. You know, there are so many species that that that evolved alongside beavers. I mean, why? You know, when you cut down a willow, why does it coppice? You know, that's probably an evolved response to Beaver cutting, right? Why does it re sprout? And so in that sense, yeah, beavers are unbelievably deeply ingrained in our systems. They've been here for 8 million years in more or less their current form. And that's that's given the rest of nature a long time to adapt to their incredibly profound engineering

Anders Reynolds  13:46  
Ben, I've got to interrupt and just let you know that your book eager has attained mythic proportions among my colleagues at the southern environmental law school. Geez. And it's all because a senior attorney in Atlanta turned almost every meeting into an opportunity to push eager on the rest of us, and it was great. It made such an impact, in fact, that when at our most recent all staff retreat, we dedicated our evening activity to like a mock Congress that selected an official mascot, a quote, unquote, official mascot, and a beaver was chosen. You know, to be more clear, I should note that the compromise had to be struck and that the mascot actually chosen was a hell Bender riding a beaver. But at any rate, okay, can you explain why these vital little ecosystem engineers whose dam building restores wetlands, improves water quality and buffers against climate change, are so easily able to capture our imaginations?

Speaker 1  14:55  
It's a great question. You know, I think, I think there are two reasons. I mean, one is that they're incredibly easy. Animals to empathize with, right? You know, as we were just talking about, they they're, they're human like, in a sense, in their penchant for construction, or, really, we're Beaver, like they were. They were building before, before we were. So that's, that's one thing is that they're, you know, it's easy to kind of put yourself in their, in their, their pause, I think. And then the other reason is, is, look, you know, you guys know, as well or better than anybody you know, we live in this time when people who care about the planet are beleaguered, right? We're under fire, you know, we're unfortunately, we're winning lots of battles, sure, but we're also losing lots of battles, you know, and the ratchet tends to go in in one direction, unfortunately, especially right now during the Trump administration and so beavers are, you know, that kind of that rare, incredibly positive, optimistic counter narrative that I think counteracts a lot of the despair that it's easy for, for thinking, feeling environmentalists to experience. You know, here's this animal that we virtually wiped out, right? That, you know, you would have been hard pressed to find a beaver in the United States. You know, 125 years ago, they were on the brink of extinction. You know, now there are probably 10 to 15 million of them in North America, you know. So they're not, they're not nearly as abundant as they were historically, of course, but you know, they're, they're going in the right direction. So they're proof that conservation works. And of course, they also provide all of these incredible ecological services and benefits for us. You know, they store water in the face of drought, and they mitigate flooding, and they filter out pollution, and they fight fires, you know, all of the wonderful services that you know most listeners of this podcast, you're probably familiar with. So it's like, yeah, here's this, you know, we're, we're in this kind of world of shit, you know. And yet, here's this, this one nifty rodent that can help counteract so many of the challenges we face. I think that's an incredibly positive story. And I think we're all a little bit starved for positive stories right now.

Bill Hodge  17:11  
You use the sort of the battle metaphor, and the battle to protect the natural world has been going for a long time, right? And it's maybe reached a fever pitch, it seems like in the last, let's say, six, seven months. But you one of the one of the weapons in a battle, in this battle in particular, is the journalistic craft. The stories are compelling, but they're only compelling if people can digest them, grab a hold of them, make sense of them, and you have an amazing ability, I think, in your writing and in that journalistic craft, to tell stories in a way that doesn't feel heavy, yet, many of the concepts are quite heavy. Maybe it's your turn of phrase, but I made quick work of reading crossings and eager and left with new understandings, even on subjects I knew a little bit about already, but I'm curious about the craft where, where would you say you honed that craft of telling these incredibly important stories that are dense, can be dense, are heavy, but in a way that it is, it is so approachable.

Speaker 1  18:17  
Well, thanks for, thanks for saying all that bill that's that's that's a really, really nice, generous question, and I appreciate it. I mean, I think a couple of answers, first of all, you know, in my books and my magazine articles as well, I, you know, I really try to focus on on people, you know, there are just these fantastic communities that spring up around these issues. You know, I think about people like, you know, Heidi Perryman, a great advocate for beavers in Martinez, California, who's, you know, done so much good for these critters. And you know, Heidi's a child psychologist who just got roped in by the charisma of beavers, and, you know, became one of their foremost defenders and advocates, and is incredibly funny and articulate about about how wonderful they are. Or, you know, in the world of road ecology, I think about Beth Pratt, you know, the famous California Director for the National Wildlife Federation who, you know, who's behind the Liberty Canyon wildlife crossing for mountain lions outside of Los Angeles, you know, who got a tattoo of P 22 the famous Cougar on her on her arm, and hikes in his footsteps every year. And she's just an incredibly passionate, enthusiastic advocate for Habitat connectivity, who have really had the honor of becoming friends with and so, you know, I think that that's one thing that I'm trying to do in my books, is just, you know, tell, tell the stories of these incredible advocates and champions for conservation, you know, who can really do a lot of the work on the page for me. And then, you know. I think, I think the other, the other point that you made, and I'm glad you said it, because it's something I think about a lot, is, you know, the importance of writing about dense, dark, potentially difficult topics and relatively light, fun, funny prose, you know. And I think about that a lot, you know, can I? Can I write about challenging stuff, you know, in a way that that carries the reader along. I mean, my, you know, my own favorite writer in the ecological world, world is David Quammen, who does that, you know, I think better than anybody, just incredibly funny on the page. And so you can read 600 pages about island biogeography and his book, Song of the dodo, because you're just carried along by his buoyant, sharp, humorous prose. So, you know, I'm not the stylist that he is, but that's what I'm trying to achieve, is, you know, prose, funny, easy to read, prose that carries you through some difficult subject matter.

Bill Hodge  21:00  
So Ben to dive back into crossings. As you know, we have a shared friend, the good doctor, Andy sarietta, and think of him often when passing under the animal bridge that you referenced at the at the top of the podcast, and you reference early in crossings, is standing on top of the animal bridge, as it's called, in the in the Flathead Reservation between Frenchtown and Arley, here in Montana, the big, visible structure of wildlife crossings that are hard to miss. Andis reminded us when he was on the wild idea that you know, just north of there some animals that aren't as charismatic and maybe don't draw the attention. You don't see them dead on the side of the road like you might with a deer or a bear, or, you know, all of these small invertebrates and things that are in you refer to it as the great squishing. And one of your stories in crossings. But he reminded us often that, you know, there's millions of critters that are squished every year, and I think you're that's one of the things I love about crossing is your work. It deals with like the visible and even, let's say, the economic impacts, which I know we want to talk about, of of vehicle collisions. But some of them aren't collisions. They're just wholesale massacres, if you will. And I think your world, you know, your work, shines a light on that world of the unseen.

Speaker 1  22:21  
So, yeah, that was, you know, certainly the intent. And that was, you know, one of the the points that was impressed upon me really early in this writing journey by a guy named Marcel Hauser, who's a Rhode ecologist in Missoula, who, maybe you, you've crossed paths with Bill, and I know that Andy's worked, worked with him, you know, doing his graduate work. And, you know, and Marcel was the guy who gave me the tour of those, those crossings on highway 93 you know, when I, when I started this, this, this whole project, more than a decade ago. And, you know, the point that Marcel made, that I thought was incredibly sharp and that, and that I've noticed constantly since then, is that, you know, we've done a lot of wildlife crossing, construction and mitigation for, you know, those large, relatively common ungulates that mess your car up when you hit them, right? We've built lots of crossings for deer and elk, and, you know, to some extent, moose and pronghorn. And that's, that's great, you know, we need more of those crossings because, you know, we want to keep those migratory ungulate herds here in the West, especially moving. And obviously there's a, you know, a huge driver safety risk, and nobody wants to hit a deer or an elk. Of course, lots of people die that way. You know, it's a huge economic cost for society. But you know, if you the kind of, the caveat to that is that is that if you take an exclusively cost benefit driver safety focused approach to wildlife mitigation, there's a lot you leave out, right? Nobody's ever totaled their car hitting a spotted salamander or a northern red legged frog, right? But you know, we know that amphibians are some of the most road endangered critters on Earth. I mean, these are animals who are undertaking their own kind of majestic migrations in their own right, you know, from their upland forest habitat to their wetland breeding habitat. And of course, we tend to put roads between those habitats. And unlike a grizzly bear, you know, a spotted salamander doesn't have much concept of what a road is, and so they're not very good at avoiding cars. And so, you know, from a conservation perspective, you know, we should absolutely be building, I think, hundreds of amphibian crossings around the country, and yet we've built precious few, because we tend to take an economic approach to wildlife mitigation rather than a conservation one. So let's build more crossings for deer and elk. That sounds great, but let's not forget those smaller critters as well.

Anders Reynolds  24:51  
You're mentioning the economic approach, but to me, it seems still really hard to track down information about wildlife vehicle. A collision, and to find, you know, the data that really shows you what's happening, and that data is super important in effectively advocating to State Departments of Transportation, for example, why they should design and at least partially fund these sorts of projects. You know, because, fundamentally, they reduce car crashes and save lives. Did you run into that problem, the sort of like data collection problem?

Speaker 1  25:28  
Yeah, there's a big data collection issue, I think, across across transportation departments, you know, a big part of it is that, you know, of course, a lot of collisions go unrecorded, right? You know, lots of states use reports to law enforcement as a, you know, as kind of a proxy for how many deer are getting hit. But you know, if you, if you clip a deer and your, you know, your car is only a little bit dinged up, but that deer goes and dies in the woods, you know, you're not gonna call the sheriff, right? That's just a, you know, an unreported collision. Other states, you know, use carcass counts, right? You know, they've got their highway maintenance crews out there, you know, picking up dead deer and other animals and taking them to the incinerator or the or the landfill. And, you know, and that's maybe better data than law enforcement reports. But even that, you know, you're, you're missing a lot of, a lot of critters. You know, there was a this great citizen science study conducted in British Columbia, I think, on Highway three, a really high roadkill area. And they basically had these citizen scientists, these volunteers, walk transects parallel to the highway, extending hundreds of meters back into the surrounding forest, and what they found was that for every one carcass on the highway that would have been picked up by a maintenance crew, there were almost three carcasses back in the woods. You know, animals who, again, had been kind of clipped and had staggered off to die, or their momentum carried them off the road and they weren't found by cleanup crews. And so you know that basically tells you that, you know, in many situations, there are probably three times more animals being killed going unreported that don't get collected by those, you know, those, those those maintenance crews. And so that's incredibly dispiriting in a lot of ways, and depressing to think about all of those animals who are, you know, dying in agony. But you know, it also tells us that there are a lot of places that, you know, wildlife crossings are justified. You know, just because you don't see a ton of dead animals on the shoulder doesn't mean that, you know, there's not a lot of collisions occurring, just going undocumented. So, you know, I think, yeah, certainly improving data, figuring out exactly where those hot spots are, you know, is really imperative if we're going to even start solving this problem.

Anders Reynolds  27:55  
Speaking of justifications for building these things there, there are other benefits to improve crossings or other passage structures, right? That we that advocates should be pushing for, for example, they come with resilience benefits or flood mitigation benefits, correct?

Speaker 1  28:14  
Dude, you're alluding to my favorite subject, which is culverts. I am. I'm kind of, I'm a culvert nerd. I love talking about culverts. So I love the idea of taking this conversation in a culvert centric direction. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're exactly right. I think about those culverts all the time, you know? So those culverts, I mean, like, not every. I mean, I'm sure that most listeners of this podcast know what a culvert is, but I bet if you pulled the public you'd be 5050, you know. But those culverts, of course, are any of you know, those, those pipes that funnel streams under roads, right? They're typically those corrugated metal pipes. Often they're, you know, slightly bigger concrete box culverts. And you know, all of those culverts are potential sites of aquatic fragmentation, right? You know, they're often built too small, or they get plugged up, and the stream is kind of funneled through them too rapid. And, you know, fish can't swim against that kind of fire hose like flow that they create. So they're this huge liability for our infrastructure, both for fish passage and also for, as you alluded to, you know, for climate resilience. You know, as we get these bigger precipitation events, especially, you know, in the southeast where you are, you know, those undersized culverts can't handle those bigger flows, and they blow out or get plugged up by debris and, you know, it's a gigantic multi, multi, multi billion dollar problem all over this country. So, you know, there's not, there's a great opportunity to kind of solve those two problems, the aquatic fragmentation problem and the climate resilience problem simultaneously. You know, with bigger culverts that can base. Glee. Let streams be streams. Let fish and your beloved Hellbenders and other aquatic animals, you know, move, move through those systems and also handle those, you know, those more intense precipitation and flow events. So I think you know there, there are lots of win wins out there on the landscape, and just as, just as wildlife crossings are addressing a habitat connectivity and a driver safety issue simultaneously. You know, those, those bigger, improved, expanded culverts are getting, you know, aquatic connectivity, also terrestrial connectivity. You know, if you if you can include more of the floodplain in your culvert, you know you can get, you know, various, you know, bobcats, weasels, skunks, you name it, all of those animals following that riparian corridor will, you know, walk through a culvert if you give them a chance, and you can solve that kind of rural infrastructure climate resilience issue as well.

Anders Reynolds  30:56  
You mentioned this being a multi billion dollar problem, you know, and I know, and probably at this point, anyone listening understands that a key part of all this is cost. Some of these crossings run into the 10s of millions of dollars. And you know, I should note here that that's just a drop in the bucket compared to comprehensive transportation plans, but I still want to ask you kind of bluntly, like, how do we overcome the cost argument? But also, in addition, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask about how we prioritize where to pursue these projects. You know, in an ideal world, we do them all, but the hard truth is, they're really expensive, and we can't do that. So should we target known hot spots, areas with imperiled species, or the areas where it's most affordable, even if there doesn't seem to be, you know, a wildlife vehicle collision problem?

Speaker 1  31:53  
It's a great question. And I mean, you know my my answer is, is all of the above, just thinking about where those, those different values you mentioned, overlap. Because, you know, as you say, there are lots of different reasons that one might build a wildlife crossing and lots of different data layers that might apply, right? I mean, you know, if you wanted to take a cost benefit focused approach, you know, you'd figure out where the most collisions are occurring, and you'd build crossings and fences. I mean, fences are kind of the critical piece of infrastructure, and keeping the animals off the road and funneling them to the crossings, you know, you'd build crossings and fences in places where you, you know, you had the highest documented collision rate. But you know, as you say, you know, we know that's not the only, the only issue out there, right? I mean, I think about, you know, South Texas, for example, which is home to, you know, the last 100 or so ocelots in the in the US. And you know, road strikes are something like 40% of Ocelot mortality. I mean, an existential threat to the survival of the species in the US and so, you know, if we're going to have ocelots in this country, you know, we need, we need road crossings there. Ocelots aren't necessarily a driver safety threat, right? They're small animals, relatively small animals, compared to a deer. But, you know, they're, they're at severe extinction risk. You know, I think here in the West, a lot about our our migratory ungulate herds, you know, the fact that we've got these, you know, these big herds of pronghorn and mule deer and elk, you know, who are approaching highways, big interstate highways, like I 80 and I 70, and, you know, not necessarily getting killed by cars, but just unable to even attempt to cross because The traffic is so dense, right? So, you know, a highway like I 80 in Wyoming doesn't have incredibly high road kill rates, but, you know, we know that it's a huge barrier to migratory ungulates. And so, you know, figuring out where animals would cross the highway if given the opportunity. You know, through the use of satellite collars and other other animal tracking methods that kind of tell us, you know, where these critters are approaching the highway and then kind of bouncing off of that wall of traffic. So, you know, we're just kind of, I mean, to me, you know, the idea is just combining all of those different values and data layers and, you know, figuring out, you know, where you can address as many of them as possible in a world of limited resources, as you say, and also acknowledging, as as you alluded to, that, you know, a lot of the the ideas of scarcity and resource limitation are a little bit fictitious, right? Or at least they're based on societal priorities, you know, I mean it look it costs, you know, a million bucks to pave to repave a mile of four lane highway, $10 million for a wildlife crossing is actually chump change in the context of state and federal transportation budgets, we haven't allocated funding enough funding to this issue, not because the funding doesn't exist, but because. Because, you know, it's just it just it hasn't been a societal priority, the way that it the way that it should.

Anders Reynolds  35:06  
I'm glad you made that point real quickly. One last question. I realize I'm asking a bunch in a row bill, and I'm sorry, but last week, we saw the introduction of a bipartisan bill called the wildlife road crossings program, Reauthorization Act, which would make permanent the wildlife crossing program, a pilot program that was first introduced under the 2021 i j A act that is designed to help construct wildlife crossings. And that's good news. But my question is, you know, for our listeners who are interested in Federal Land Policy, how do you see the role of federal agencies or congressional members working in addressing the challenges your book crossings lays out, are there policy levers or legislative ideas that you believe are underutilized or maybe especially ripe for action.

Speaker 1  36:08  
That's it. That's a good, good question. Mean, look, I think that that reauthorizing that wildlife crossings pilot program and turning it making it permanent at a much higher funding level, which that bill does, which is, which is really exciting, is really important. That's, you know, I think a key, a key policy lever, and, you know, and then look, just making sure that all of these agencies are communicating, you know, which, which happens less than it should, right? I mean, you know, generally speaking, especially in the West, of course, you know, you've got, you know the big public land management agencies. You know the Forest Service and and BLM, and to some extent the Park Service. You know, managing landscapes that state and federal highways are running through. And you know, I think you would, you would hope that you know all of those agencies, the federal land managers, you know this, the state and federal transportation departments and the state wildlife management agencies like, you know, Colorado Parks and Wildlife here in Colorado, you know, which has lots of collars out on animals on landscape, you know, you would hope that those, all of those agencies, are Communicating and that habitat connectivity is kind of embedded into all of their missions. But historically, that's, you know, that's happened less than you, you know you less than you might hope. And you know, here in Colorado, I mean, you know, C dot and CPW, you know, haven't have a memorandum of understanding, basically, that they're going to collaborate on connectivity issues. And, you know, I think that that sort of collaboration, you know, just making sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, I think, is incredibly important, and probably doesn't happen as often as it should.

Bill Hodge  37:54  
You know, the book. And for a while here we've been talking about the crossings, part of, you know, generally highly trafficked roads that are having impacts on on either the loss of of wildlife or the loss in indirect ways. You know, you're brought up by 80 in Wyoming, and literally, the study that you illustrate, where pronghorn were kind of hit the interstate. They weren't getting hit on the interstate, but they were hit the interstate and stopping and it was cutting them off a part of their habitat that might help sustain them through a, let's say, a hard winter, heavy snow winter, or whatever. Another thing that you cover in the book, besides the crossings, though, is just the idea of the volume of roads, and you specifically get into a space where Anders and I live and breathe, and that's the one specific federal agency of the Forest Service and their ability to build countless miles of roads. And I just want, I guess I have a question here, but also just for our listener. You know, if you heard the Chris Wood episode where we talked about the history of the roadless rule. We're going to have a month coming up here in January, or just dive into the roadless rule in great detail, in specific landscapes and what the rule actually does, and that sort of thing. But if you if for the listener, if you want to understand the history of why there had to be a roadless rule, you should read crossings, because Ben does an amazing job of digging into just how passionate the agency was about building roads, right? Ben, like it was, I'm sure that was an interesting part of the journey. It was just like people don't know the volume of roads that a land management agency has built.

Speaker 1  39:36  
Absolutely, yeah. And honestly, that's, you know, I think, Bill, I think, I think you just hit the best possible answer to Anders previous question, which is like, you know, what are the policy levers we should be pulling right now? And I mean absolutely preserving the roadless rule is the most important thing, I think, or one of the on the very short list of most important things that we you know, we should be doing right now is the. The Trump administration tries to unravel it. And, you know, I know you talked to Chris about that, so, you know, briefly, of course, the Forest Service is the land of many uses. And you know, a lot of those uses turn out to to require, or at least, you know, the agency's mind to require roads. You know, it's funny to go back and read, you know, the memoirs and journals of early Forest Service Rangers you know, like you know, Bud Moore and the in the Bitterroot you know, who talk about this fanatical road building spree in the early history of the agency you know, in the in the in the former half of the 20th century, when, you know, road building was seen as this kind of enlightened form of stewardship, you know, if we're going to be able to count the elk and restore the trout habitat, and, you know, remove the trees that are blighted by beetles, you know, we need roads to do all of that stuff. And so road building was, you know, sort of the this incredibly high form of management. And, you know, and then, of course, you know, all of those in the sort of mid century, all of those existing system roads were, you know, co opted by private timber companies operating on public land. Who built, you know, hundreds of 1000s of miles more of logging roads. You know, I was hanging out in the Bitterroot with some guys who, you know, who joke that they must have driven to every single tree, right? Because there's, I mean, these, you know, these forests in many places have higher road densities than New York City, you know, to service all of those, you know, all of those, those timber companies who actually built the roads, you know, who were basically paid by the Forest Service to do the road construction. The trees were almost secondary, I think, in some logging operations. And so, you know, we've ended up with this incredibly bloated, redundant, ecologically catastrophic road network on on forest lands at the same time, you know, our national forests also protect some of the last unroaded areas, of course, and that's what the roadless rule, you know, instituted by Bill Clinton was designed to preserve. You know, those, those places that roads haven't yet touched, and we know that those are, you know, the most important core habitats we have for grizzly bears and wolverines and Lynx and bull trout. You know, name an iconic Western species. You know as Mike dombeck, the Chief of the Forest Service who instituted that rule, pointed out to me as well. You know, there are lots of places in the east that have roadless areas as well. Lots in the southeast, lots of New England, you know, smaller parcels, but incredibly ecologically important in their own right. For those, you know, endemic salamanders that you guys were talking about earlier in places like Appalachia. So, you know, that's the kind of the the incredible duality of the Forest Service. You know, it's simultaneously the entity that manages more roads than any other on planet Earth. It's our planet's preeminent road administrator, and yet it's also sort of the the last institution, kind of standing in the way of eroding some of the most intact habitats we have left. It preserves those places as well, or at least it has, historically for the last quarter century or so, and now, of course, Trump is trying to undo that.

Anders Reynolds  43:35  
Ben, one last question for me. I have two words written in my notes. It just says, Italian futurism. I'm not sure what I meant. Italian futurism is, is a movement early last century that emphasized speed and dynamism and violence. I honestly can't remember what my question was related to

Speaker 1  43:54  
that I could make something up.

Anders Reynolds  43:57  
Yeah, that might be nice. I think it had to do with with speeding by roadkill. But instead of that, I'll, I'll ask this, what is one takeaway from your book crossings you'd like listeners to carry with them the next time they drive on a highway or even one of those forest service roads, what should they notice? And what should they question?

Speaker 1  44:19  
Hmm, that's a that's a really, a really fantastic question. I think one of the incredibly profound things about roads is not only the impacts that they have at the scale of the road itself, which is this relatively narrow ribbon of pavement or gravel or dirt, but you know the profound changes that they exert on the landscape around them, right? You know, Bill mentioned those, those pronghorn and mule deer in Wyoming bumping into i 80, for example. I mean those, those are, that's an. A perfect example these animals who kind of collide with this wall of traffic and then can't access potentially 10s of 1000s of acres of prime winter range south of the interstate. So the road itself is again this relatively narrow, isolated feature on the landscape that is nevertheless affecting the movements of species and the ecosystem for enormous areas on either side. You know, roads also change the surrounding land use in really profound ways, right? You know, a road goes in and, you know, all of a sudden, you know, building a subdivision, a bunch of condos or townhouses alongside it starts to look like a pretty, a pretty good idea. You know, obviously the Trump administration doesn't want to build roads and roadless areas for the sake of the roads. They want to build roads and roadless areas to log the trees in the roadless areas, right? So in that sense, you know, roads facilitate the clear cut of old growth forest. And so you know the capacity of roads to change everything in their Ambit in a way that extends vastly far beyond the pavement itself. I just find that, you know, so profound. And once you start looking for those sorts of land use changes induced by a road that you see them everywhere.

Bill Hodge  46:31  
Wow, so much, so much there. I have one last question for us, but before I get to that question, I want to just ask a question of our audience. This is coming out at the beginning of December, for those who celebrate holidays that involve gift giving, at the end of the month, I want to highly encourage you to go to your local bookstore pick up eager the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter, or a copy of the book crossings, how road ecology is shaping the future of our planet. I promise you, no matter how much you think you may know, you will learn something new. You will enjoy the journey. And if you don't know a lot about these topics, Ben, you will leave richer for better understanding how to think about that road that you're driving on every day and and that road you may use to access your favorite hunting spot. And so so just I want to ask that of our audience get out pick pick up one or both of these books. I love them both. Ben, I'm with this question, what's on the hard drive now? What are you working on? What are you digging your journalistic claws into? These days?

Speaker 1  47:34  
I'm writing a book right now about about fish migration, or fish movements, broadly construed as this Keystone ecological and cultural force that we've screwed up in a million ways, of course, and are now trying to protect and restore and understand. So every chapter is about a different species or a group of species. Of course, salmon are part of the story. Lamprey, herring, sturgeon. I was actually in in Tennessee earlier this year, hanging out with the incredible diverse fishes of Appalachia in Anders, part of the world, which is just an incredibly beautiful eye opening experience, not a place that I'd spent a ton of time. So I'm, yeah, I'm neck deep in in streams and ponds and rivers and and estuaries and oceans right now, immersed in the world of fish.

Bill Hodge  48:29  
Well, it's pretty exciting to know what our next conversation is going to be about.

Speaker 1  48:33  
Yeah, I'll be back in the pod in 2046, or something like that, when this book is done.

Bill Hodge  48:38  
This is a long haul process, for sure. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's just been so great to hear about two wonderful books. And just your, your your craft as a journalist is just, I really, really want to plot that. And thank you for coming on,

Anders Reynolds  48:55  
Ben, I'm so glad you got to spend some time in the southern apps, but I'm, I'm really happy you got to spend some time with us today. This has been a really, really good chat, and thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 1  49:04  
Thank you guys for the conversation, and thanks for everything you do for conservation. We all appreciate it.

Bill Hodge  49:09  
Well, thank you. Ben, coming up on the wild idea podcast, we G and haw with mule dragger, a wilderness thinker as much as he is a wilderness Packer. And we have some special episodes lined up for you at the end of the year. If you like the podcast, we hope you will do two things besides subscribing. And do please subscribe on your podcast player of choice, but give us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we hope you'll take a minute to share the podcast with your friends, your enemies, your colleagues help. Just send them a link. And if you want to go deeper in what we've been doing here, you can sign up for our newsletter at the wild idea.com and we look forward to seeing all of you on down the trail.

Speaker 2  49:45  
The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bren Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkoshev At day pack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from. Railroad Earth, and was composed by John skihan. Our executive producer and ring leader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai