The day’s first kill is barely recognizable, a burnt sienna smudge on the dark pavement. Dr. Merav Vonshak kneels in the cool November morning and pulls out her phone and ruler, documenting the tiny, crushed body of a Pacific newt. By spring’s end, she and the other Newt Patrol volunteers who keep watch over this four-mile stretch of road in the foothills of Northern California’s Santa Cruz Mountains will have recorded around five thousand of them—one of the single largest murder rates of any wildlife species anywhere in the world….
