Which of the following statements about the impacts of roads on habitat is incorrect?

Sometimes the risks of new infrastructure clearly outweigh the benefits. In the past several years, you’ve helped prevent dams on the Mura River, halted oil exploration in Virunga National Park—home to critically endangered mountain gorillas, and kept up the pressure against mining infrastructure in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

But WWF doesn’t want to stop all new infrastructure projects. There are plenty of developments that can benefit our environment: renewable energy facilities, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, and high-efficiency and climate-resilient structures that are planned with ecosystems and wildlife habitats in mind. For infrastructure to be beneficial, planners must consider the long-term impacts, risks, and trade-offs. They must take biodiversity and climate change into account, develop a plan for long-term governance and management, and engage local communities at the earliest possible stages of planning. WWF collaborates with communities, companies, governments, and financial institutions around the world to make sure new infrastructure is done right—in a way that minimizes harm to wildlife, forests, and rivers, and accounts for important benefits nature provides and maximizes benefits to local communities.

Learn more about WWF's work on infrastructure. 

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Number of road-related studies conducted in each continent from 2011 to 2015. The cross-hatched sections of each bar represent the number of studies conducted in protected areas