‘Ghost roads’ could be the biggest direct threat to tropical forests

By using volunteers to map roads in forests across Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea, an innovative study shows that existing maps of the Asia-Pacific region are rife with errors. It also reveals that unmapped roads are extremely common — up to seven times more abundant than mapped ones. Such ‘ghost roads’ are promoting illegal logging, mining, wildlife poaching and deforestation in some of the world’s biologically richest ecosystems.