I live in an area not yet entirely trampled by modernity. Wildness still has a waning foothold, here. In late spring, fawns get “the zoomies” in the open space around our house. Newts hunt worms on the driveway when it’s wet out. Douglas squirrels are busy in the trees. Raccoons, possums, and coyotes make reliable nocturnal appearances. A cougar once traipsed through the wooded area between our house and the street. Bears are periodically spotted in the neighborhood. A chorus of frogs provides a soundtrack for summer nights—complemented by the occasional owl. A variety of other birds abound, including bald eagles nesting year after year in trees behind our house. Bats, various pollinators, dragonflies, and garter snakes add to the variety. It’s a real treat and privilege to be at least a witness in this Community of Life.

One downside is that roadkill is not uncommon in this interface region, and wildlife loses the contest every time. Deer, possums, and newts are the most visible to us. Every time I move a smashed newt off our street, I am close to tears and apologize to the departed critter: this should never have happened; you did nothing wrong; you didn’t deserve this end. It’s particularly painful when the flattened newt is on the very driveway that I try keep clear of visually-confusing leaves and other material—and exercise hyper-vigilance when driving through. Even if it was not me whose tires did the deed, I know that I failed in my watch, and feel it deeply. The core fault lies in operating a vehicle across newt habitat: an alien novelty in ecological terms.

Frequent exposure to roadkill prompts my wife to say that this is why we should all live in cities. Leave the hinterlands to wild creatures. It’s selfish to want to live amongst the wildlife. Confine us all to what I might term designated hell-holes, or feed lots.

A clear logic accompanies this argument, and it’s hard for me to efficiently articulate why I am diametrically divergent. It just seems viscerally clear that cities are not “the answer” for dialing back the host of threats perpetrating a sixth mass extinction. In this post, I will attempt to make the case.

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