Network of ‘ghost roads’ paves the way for levelling Asia-Pacific rainforests

Bulldozed tracks and informal byways in tropical forests and palm-oil plantations almost always' an indicator of future deforestation, say researchers

A vast network of undocumented ghost roads" is pushing into the world's untouched rainforests and driving their destruction in the Asia-Pacific region, a new study has found.

By using Google Earth to map tropical forests on Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea islands, researchers from James Cook University in Australia documented 1.37m kilometres (850,000 miles) of roads across 1.4m sq kilometres of rainforest on the islands - between three and seven times what is officially recorded on road databases.