Okay, Chelsea, we have talked about all the terrible pollution that comes from cars we
don't really talk about in the past.
I think we did a whole episode on it, in fact.
Yeah, we did.
I found something new that is kind of destroying the world slowly that didn't come up in that
episode, but I thought it'd be fun.
It's an article on the Atlantic came out September 7th, 2023 article title America
is telling itself a lie about roadkill written by Ben Goldarb.
Oh no.
The great irony of roadkill is this.
Its most conspicuous victims tend to be those least in need of saving.
Simple probabilities dictate that you're more likely to collide with a common animal,
a squirrel, a raccoon, a white-tailed deer, than a scarce one.
On the roadside, dead tend to be culled from the ranks of the urban, the resilient, and
the ubiquitous.
But roadkill is also a culprit in our planet's current mass die-off.
Every year, American cars hit more than 1 million large animals such as deer, elk, and
moose, and as many as 340 million birds across the continent, roadkill may claim the lives
of billions of pollinating insects as well.
The ranks of the victims include many endangered species.
One 2008 congressional report found that traffic existentially threatens at least 21 critters
in the US, including the Houston Toad and the Hawaiian Goose.
If the last ever California tiger salamander shuffles off this mortal coil, the odds are
decent that it will happen on rain slick blacktop one damn spring night.
The closer group for roadkills hitting toll are reptiles and amphibians known collectively
as herps, which I've actually never heard before.
No, that makes me think of something else.
Yeah.
I'm okay.
Now I'm wondering if they have the same root word.
The small bodies and secretive habits of herps conceal their dominance.
Many forests in the eastern United States support more salamanders than small mammals
and birds combined.
But about one in five reptile species and two in five amphibian species are threatened
with extinction.
And many more are on their way.
Snapping turtles and spotted salamanders are on the verge of vanishing altogether, but
they become rarer and more isolated, retreating from our landscape and our lives.
Biologists refer to localized extinctions, a pond empty of frogs here, a pool robbed
of salamanders there, as extra patience.
Many small losses that over time can amount to a very big one.
So what lands advocate David M. Carroll has lamented the silence of the frogs, a hush
as disquieting as the one that terrified Rachel Carson.
Not quite sure what that's.
Oh, silence of the lambs.
Okay, I think right?
Is Rachel the name of the person in that movie?
Rachel.
Oh, how to help Rachel.
I don't think it is.
Okay.
Well, I'm not sure who Rachel Carson is.
That's the first she's mentioned.
No, this is definitely not silence of the lands.
She's old.
She's an American marine biologist.
Okay, that makes sense.
I don't know what she got up to though, so it'll be forever a mystery.
Okay, I'm not looking into it further.
No, that's all I need to know.
The forces muscling the frogs and other herps are many, habitat loss, fungal disease pollution,
but it's not a coincidence that herps are predisposed to become roadkill.
Reptiles and amphibians move slowly and as cold-blooded creatures, they gravitate towards
warm surfaces, whether limestone or asphalt.
Herps lumber across lakefront streets to deposit their eggs, snake slither over highways to
huddle in hypernacular.
Wow, there are a lot of words I've never heard before.
That's a good, fringy mini.
If there are words we don't know of, then listen before.
Worst of all, some herps, such as northern leopard frogs, don't attempt to race between
cars as a steer-dew or avoid roads altogether, as rizzly bears do.
Instead, they're what scientists call non-responders, animals who are unfazed by traffic even when
prudence would serve them well.
Amphibians whose names mean double life are especially susceptible.
Frogs, toads, and salamanders belong to two worlds, the water in which they're born,
and the upland forests where many species upon swapping gills for long spend their adulthood.
When you have a toe in two realms, you must migrate between them.
Amphibians move most frenziedly on spring nights and when rain refills the ephemeral
pools at dimple forest floors and summon them to mate.
Good frogs that spent the winter as cold and hard as popsicles preserved by their own natural
antifreeze, thaw, and stir.
Salamanders clamber from their catacombs, peepers thrill with a vehemence out of all
proportion to their thumbnail-sized bodies.
Thousands of miniscule lives go on the march, called by wetlands that will soon be cloudy
with gelatinous egg masses.
In some places, the emergence occurs over weeks, and others in a few big nights.
And a salamander on a big night will cross any road in their path, come hell, high water,
or Honda.
When an aggregation of libidness, herps, boils over a road, the outcome is what some biologists
call non-to-scientifically a massive squishing.
Squishing statistics are both appalling and abstract in the way that astronomical death
tolls often are.
Nearly 28,000 leper frogs killed over two separate two-year periods on Lake Erie causeway, up
to 10,000 red-sided garter snakes slain in one season in Manitoba, 2,500 toads flattened
on a French road, and Indiana scientists who counted more than 10,000 crushed animals found
that 95% were reptiles and amphibians.
You've probably never heard one pop and eat your tires, but in many places, herps
not deer, not squirrels make up most vertebrate roadkill.
This does continue on for quite some time, but I think that's far enough along into
the article to at least give you an idea of what's going on, and just a reminder that
we do so much damage to the environment that we don't even really think about.
I know, like, we commonly hit things with our cars.
I don't mean that nonchalantly as in, like, just mowing down deer, but there's a reason
there's what's called bug juice at the gas station to clean off your windshield.
Yeah, I never really thought about it, unfortunately, and that article is sad, especially bugs.
But we've also talked about there's less bugs, and it's probably because we've hit
so many bugs in the past that we're just-
It's definitely part of it.
The big word of them one by one, even where we grew up, you would commonly see even the
big ones, and if people are hitting the big ones, such as deer and moose and bear and
stuff, imagine how many little things you're hitting without.
This is sad.
Yeah.
Without knowing it.
Don't worry, I have plenty of those.
We're ruining the world in many ways.
We don't even realize it.
Articles in the future ready to go.
So this is just a small taste of it.
That's what I depend on you for.
Please self-reflect on all of the small vertebrates that you have killed over the next 48 hours
and pay them homage, if you will.
48 hours, so that's it.
48 hours.
Yeah, that's all you need.
In the meantime, though, we will see you all on Friday for the main episode.
Bye.