AGRAWAL | Tar, Traffic and the Butterfly's Silent Scream

Taking pleasure in the beauty of nature, working towards environmental sustainability, reducing consumption and increasing knowledge are hallmarks of my professional existence. 

So when a text message from my 16-year-old daughter came through as I stood at the lectern, seconds from introducing our weekly departmental speaker, I was thrilled albeit a bit startled. “You found a roadkill fox?” I typed back quickly, my mind attempting a dizzying pivot — “Yes, please, pick it up, that would be awesome!” A proud moment for a father and ecologist — though, soured by the image of a beautiful animal, potentially mangled and discarded, a casualty of the very infrastructure most of us rely on. Driving is dangerous, but the show had to go on. “I am pleased to introduce today’s seminar speaker.”

Later, I learned the animal was a gray fox, Urocyon cinereoargenteus, not the more common red one, Vulpes vulpes. Two species in separate genera with distinct ecological roles — yet  both canids, related to the dogs we so often invite into our homes. When Russian scientists tried to domesticate foxes in the 1960s, after some generations of breeding they were like tame dogs, complete with floppy ears and wagging tails. Among others, our domestic and wild canids, however different their fates, are both victims of the same tar and traffic. Even our chosen companions are not safe: an estimated  100,000 dogs are killed by cars annually in the United States, let alone cats.

But I study monarch butterflies, the royal Danaus plexippus. They fly over roads and thus are rarely run over directly under wheels. In fact, I see campaigns to plant milkweed along highway corridors, turning these strips of land into butterfly havens. Less mowing, more milkweed. Maybe more monarchs? Perhaps, but the data is stark: an estimated 20 million monarchs perish in car accidents each year. That’s a toll on a species already struggling against habitat loss and climate change. They are trying to reach their overwintering sites in central Mexico, arriving around the Day of the Dead — only to end their journey in a macabre windshield splat.

The tragedy of our automobility came into focus during the "anthropause" of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The roads were eerily free of cars. People hid, avoided, isolated — and what happened? Wildlife emerged and survived. Curious bears wandered into suburban parks, coyotes walked city street, and road mortality across countless species plummeted. The anthropause was an accidental, global experiment demonstrating a simple causal link: roads kill when people are driving. When we retreat, the wild world survives. 

But roads are a component of our civilization, and perhaps they have some unintended ecological benefits. In Florida, the lightning capital of the world, fire is both a killer and a restorer of ecosystems. Where there are so many people and so much latent fuel, firebreaks are vital. Roads can serve that purpose, slicing through the landscape to slow the inevitable burn. Still, this can hardly be justification for fragmentation and extinction. Roads are the number one enemy of Florida’s endangered panther.

Our acceptance and investment in roads are a policy failure. The current system is designed to sell and maintain an addiction to driving. To me, roads are a symbol of inefficiency and pollution.  We talk about “miles per gallon” like it’s a meaningful measure, when it's an old-school metric of environmental compromise. We allow the auto lobby to dictate transportation policy, preventing genuine change. We are afraid to legislate, to tell people to slow down, to drive less or to pay the full costs of our travel. We trim the fat around the edges with a hybrid car here and a bike lane there, but refuse to do the hard work of creating legitimate alternatives.

We need train stations in city centers, as in other parts of the world, transforming how we live and travel, making Thanksgiving journeys calmer and supply chains more efficient. Trains force a necessary slowdown, a shared journey that is fundamentally better than the isolating freedom promised by a personal vehicle. My modest proposal is a legislative one, a demand for a fundamental shift:

•  Trillion-Dollar Rail Investment: Multiply the All Aboard Act, currently under consideration by Congress, and mandate a decade-long investment in high-speed rail networks that frequently make driving the less convenient option. Rural residents may drive to the “main line,” taking the train into cities for services or work. Environmental and economic benefits will surely follow.
• The 100 MPG Mandate: Demand a new baseline for fuel economy: Not the 25 MPG we have on the road now, but 100 MPG minimum, forcing innovation or obsolescence. The technology exists, and subsidies will be needed until they are adopted and costs come down. 
• Taxing Hyper-Mobility: After the implementation of the All Aboard Act, impose higher taxes for households with more than one car for every two people where solid train options are available. The luxury of hyper-mobility must be constrained.

Until we demand such changes, until we refuse to be governed by individual automotive freedom, roads will be jammed and will continue their quiet slaughter, forcing us toward moral reckoning.

The ethics and economics are challenging. A friend may see ethics in eating what the road has already killed, yet I see the same tragedy and wonder if the answer is to stop eating animals altogether. Perhaps I am straying from our main discussion. But let me say this — I would encourage all readers to be suspicious of economic arguments on the benefits of individual consumption and its supposed benefits. Sure, let’s hear the arguments and also challenge economists to understand when and why spending on infrastructure, as proposed, promotes growth and prosperity. We have certainly seen this in our country’s past and need both the public transportation and the investment in our collective future. 

In a few months, my taxidermist will finish his work. I will stare at the beautiful gray fox that my daughter retrieved: lean, dog-like and forever stilled. Yes, she likes to drive, but she wants you to know that she didn’t hit the fox. My wife doesn’t want it in the house. Maybe my office; maybe the basement? Wherever it ends up, I will study it. It will be a reminder of the cost of convenience, of the ways this animal and I — a fellow mammal — share a damaged ecosystem. Sometimes I wonder if anyone sees how much we lose without even noticing. I want fewer dead things. I want more butterflies. And I want the false freedom of the car to be replaced by the quiet connected comfort of trains.

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