Ben Goldfarb

Independent conservation journalist

Wednesday, June 26, 2024
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Where: Whitefish Community Center

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: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. and how conservationists, engineers, animal rehabbers, and community organizers are working to undo the havoc highways have wreaked upon American cities.

Ben will join us and read excerpts from his book, as well as invite us into conversation about the lessons and insights his research may offer as we work to confront the growing threat our increasingly busy highways, like Highway 2 between Columbia Falls and East Glacier, present to wildlife.

Ben Goldfarb is an independent conservation journalist and the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping The Future of Our Planet, named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times, and Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Science, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The Guardian, High Country News, Outside Magazine, Smithsonian, bioGraphic, Pacific Standard, Audubon Magazine, Scientific American, Vox, OnEarth, Yale Environment 360, Grantland, The Nation, Hakai Magazine, VICE News, and other publications. His fiction has appeared in publications including Motherboard, Moss, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Hopper, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize. His non-fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Science & Nature Writing and Cosmic Outlaws: Coming of Age at the End of Nature. Ben lives in Colorado with his wife, Elise, and his dog, Kit — which is, of course, what you call a baby beaver.