ROADS and the range of vehicles they carry are now so much part of the fabric of our day-to-day living that almost no sustained attention is given to their impact on birds and other wildlife including mammals, amphibians, reptiles, roadside flowers and pollinating insects.
This an oversight that the RSPB's former principal scientist, Paul Donald, is determined to address.
In Traffication (a word of his own creation), he is relentless, passionate even, in his exposure of the polluting ways of both petrol- and diesel- fuelled motor vehicles.
Because they are not powered by fossil fuels, e-vehicles are somewhat less harmful, but not a lot less so because of the toxic materials required for manufacture of their batteries.
The author also shines a torch on the poisonous micro-particles given off by the friction both of brake pads and tyre contact with road surface.
Noise and headlights further contribute to the damage. . . as does the salt, liberally sprinkled on icy roads, which creates its own contamination, especially when it finds its way into watercourses.
If this were not bleak enough, the author also highlights how roads have persistently fragmented habitat, almost invariably to the detriment of wildlife.
And of course, there is the all too conspicuous issue of 'roadkill' - the endless slaughter of birds and animals, great and small, as a result of collision with cars and lorries.
At the end of the book, Donald does seek to identify some reasons for hope for the future, but, alas, this is the least convincing part of his fast-moving, compelling and often controversial narrative
What hits home is his central message. "The scientific evidence is overwhelming," he writes.
"We are blasting our wildlife away with traffic noise, flattening it with cars and poisoning it with exhaust fumes.
"Traffic has sucked the life out of our countryside - we are quite literally 'driving' our wildlife to extinction."
When Traffication was published in hardback in 2023, there was flurry of reviews which rightly emphasised the book's ground-breaking importance.
Pelagic Publishing have now brought it out anew in paperback at a modest price of just £11.99.
It is a most impressive eye-opener of a book which is lucidly-written, highly readable and thus greatly to be recommended.
https://pelagicpublishing.com/