Alex Vasquez’s Reviews > Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet > Status Update

"Today America's road crews apply more than twenty million tons of salt annually, and Minnesota is among the heaviest users. Each winter the state spreads thirty-six tons for every mile of four-lane highway."

"The combination of Roundup and ethanol wiped out thirty million acres of milkweed between 1996 and 2013, an interval that coincided with an 84 percent decline in the monarch population."

"Engineers waged war against unwanted flora by 'mowing, burning, blading, dragging, steaming, hand pulling, hoeing, smothering, and killing with herbicides.' The Bureau of Public Roads nuked road margins with cyanide, formaldehyde, and arsenic."

"The Midwest, where more than 99% of historic tallgrass prairie has been sacrificed to agriculture and development."

"Insects are going extinct eight times faster than mammals, reptiles, and birds; per the same study, the world loses 2.5% of its insect mass every year."

"'I am uneasy carrying so many of the dead,' Lopez mourned. 'The carnage is so obvious.'"