"Around the world, humans are fracturing vast forests. Highways snake through the Amazon’s rain forests, and Indonesia plans an ambitious transportation grid in Borneo, through some of the largest untouched expanses of tropical forests.

If you were to parachute at random into any of the planet’s forests, you’d probably land a mile or less from its edge, according to a recent study.

Conservation biologists have intensely debated the dangers that the fracturing of woodlands poses to animals. While many studies have shown that extinctions are more common in fragmented environments, others haven’t documented much effect."

Carl Zimmer reports for the New York Times December 5, 2019. [2]