Ben Goldfarb, environmental journalist and author, presented at the Kennedy Center on Dec. 4 as part of the Legacies of Colonialism lecture series.
His lecture, entitled “Paved Paradise: The Ecological Impact of America’s Highway System,” focused on the effects that roads have on the environment, specifically animal habitats and migration.
“The same freedom and mobility and momentum that our giant new highways provided human beings, they deny other animals on a truly mind boggling scale,” Goldfarb said.
Roads have interrupted the natural order and existence of many species, he said. The interruption becomes more visible, however, when considering the interaction between animals and roads.
On the 4 million miles of road in the United States, more than a million animals are killed by cars every day, Goldfarb said. Some of those animals are small, such as frogs and snakes, but bigger animals such as deer and moose cause major problems for drivers.
More than 400 drivers are killed every year in deer vehicle collisions, which makes the deer the most dangerous wild animal in America, he added. And even if the crash is not fatal, a deer collision on average costs more than $9,000, including hospital bills, vehicle repairs and insurance costs.
Animal collisions cost society over $8 billion a year, which makes it a concern for government action.
Land bridges and other efforts are currently being built to both decrease the amount of animal-caused accidents on roads and help preserve animal populations near major interstates, Goldfarb said.
Goldfarb also talked about several initiatives taken by Utah to improve conservation, including the wildlife overpass over I-80 in Parleys Canyon near Park City.
This overpass, built in 2018 and costing about $5 million, is used by moose, elk, coyotes, mountain lions, raccoons, bobcats and many other animals to safely cross I-80. Similar overpasses, along with underpasses or other wildlife bridges, are being constructed in other cities, he said.
“Not every wildlife accommodation has to be a big, conspicuous, beautiful, $10-million-dollar bridge,” Goldfarb said. “There’s a lot we can do with the existing infrastructure that’s already on the landscape.”
Other municipalities have taken steps to modify existing roads, tunnels and fencing around interstates to aid animal migration, Goldfarb said. These actions cost less money, but still can be effective in reaching conservation goals.
Students attending the lecture spilled from the conference room into the hallway and two overflow rooms where the presentation was streamed.
“This topic was one that’s applicable to everybody,” Alex Keogh, a TA for the lecture series, said. “You can feel the impact in your everyday life of environmental conservation.”
Goldfarb’s lecture related this ecological impact to a legacy of colonialism, the theme of this semester’s lecture series at the Kennedy Center.
The presentations this semester have focused on this legacy, including the “transmission of ideas, peoples, nationalisms, infrastructures, power relations, and aesthetic sensibilities,” according to the Kennedy Center.
The Center invited authors, journalists and scholars to present on a variety of subjects and disciplines, according to Quinn Mecham, associate director for research and academic programs at the Kennedy Center.
“The Kennedy Center cares about two big things: we are really interdisciplinary,” Mecham said, “and we care about things that are internationally connected.”
The center focuses on the interconnectedness between regions of the world from a variety of disciplines. They are in charge of the campus's study abroad programs and also host several minors, including a Global Environmental Studies minor, Mecham said.
Emma Shobe, a student enrolled in the lecture series, said Goldfarb’s presentation was eye-opening, as she had never really thought about the negative impacts of roads. She was also interested to learn about the connection between colonialism and road ecology.
“It continually surprises me just how entrenched those legacies of colonialism are into our society, even in something as innocuous as roadways, something we use every day,” she said.
Goldfarb finished his lecture by answering questions about possible ways the United States can correct some of the decisions made while still making much-needed roadways.
“We can still reckon with and reverse some of our most egregious environmental and social mistakes,” he said. “We want roads to be visitors, rather than dominators, of the landscape.”