Miner

• In an article published today in Nature, my colleagues and I show that illicit, often out-of-control road building is imperilling forests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
• Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive.
• Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples.
• All nations have some unmapped or unofficial roads, but the situation is especially bad in biodiversity-rich developing nations, where roads are proliferating at the fastest pace in human history.

Mapping ghost roads

• This workforce then spent some 7,000 hours hand-mapping roads, using fine-scale satellite images from Google Earth.
• For starters, unmapped ghost roads seemed to be nearly everywhere.
• In fact, when comparing our findings to two leading road databases, OpenStreetMap and the Global Roads Inventory Project, we found ghost roads in these regions to be 3 to 6.6 times longer than all mapped roads put together.

• When ghost roads appear, local deforestation soars – usually immediately after the roads are built.
• We found the density of roads was by far the most important predictor of forest loss, outstripping 38 other variables.

Roads and protected areas

• In protected areas, we found only one-third as many roads compared with nearby unprotected lands.
• The bad news is that when people do build roads inside protected areas, it leads to about the same level of forest destruction compared to roads outside them.
• Keeping existing protected areas intact is especially urgent, given more than 3,000 protected areas have already been downsized or degraded globally for new roads, mines and local land-use pressures.

Hidden roads and the human footprint

• To gauge how much impact we’re having, researchers use the human footprint index, which brings together data on human activities such as roads and other infrastructure, land-uses, illumination at night from electrified settlements and so on.
• When ghost roads are included in mapping the human impact on eastern Borneo, areas with “very high” human disturbance double in size, while the areas of “low” disturbance are halved.

Artificial intelligence

• Worse, these roads can be actively encouraged by aggressive infrastructure-expansion schemes — most notably China’s Belt and Road Initiative, now active in more than 150 nations.
• You might think AI could do this better, but that’s not yet true – human eyes can still outperform image-recognition AI software for mapping roads.
• Once we have this information, we can make it public that so authorities, NGOs and researchers involved in forest protection can see what’s happening.

Distinguished Professor Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic bodies. He is a former Australian Laureate and director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University.

• New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - March 27, 2024) - B2i Digital, Inc. has been named a gold sponsor and is providing marketing support for Maxim Group's virtual conference, "The Next Frontier: Bitcoin Mining in a Post-Halving Era," scheduled for April 3, 2024, at 9:00 AM ET.
• The event, hosted on Maxim Group's M-Vest platform, will feature discussions with companies in the Bitcoin mining ecosystem, including miners, equipment, and service providers.
• To view the full announcement, including downloadable images, bios, and more, click here .
• Click image above to view full announcement.

• WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the prospective class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=23047 or call Phillip Kim, Esq.
• The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation.
• Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company.
• 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017.

• SSR Mining purports to be a “precious metals mining company with four producing assets located in the United States, Türkiye [“Turkey”], Canada and Argentina.
• For more information, submit a form , email attorney Aaron Dumas, Jr., or give us a call at (800) 350-6003.
• The Allegations: Robbins LLP is Investigating the Allegations that SSR Mining Inc. (SSRM) Misled Investors Regarding its Safety Practices
  According to the complaint, during the class period, defendants failed to disclose that (1) they materially overstated SSR Mining’s commitment to safety and the efficacy of its safety measures, and (2) SSR Mining engaged in unsafe mining practices, which were reasonably likely to result in a mining disaster.
• A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.