Scientists recently quantified of one of the most widespread and least recognized ways that humans are damaging the natural world — by building endless numbers of roads. Roads fragment natural habitats, and the more of them there are, the smaller and more compromised those habitats become.

The new study, published in the journal Science by a team of 10 conservation scientists at institutions in Germany, Greece, Poland, the United Kingdom, Brazil and the United States, used an open-source, citizen science database of global roads. The research found that the Earth’s land areas (excluding Antarctica and Greenland) were 80 percent roadless, but found that roads had divided that land area into some 600,000 pieces. More than half of these were less than a square kilometer (. 39 square miles) in area.  >Read More via http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/34332/20161219/roads-shattered-earths-surface-600-000-fragments-roadless-areas-need-protection.htm