Malaysian Borneo Plundered As 80 Percent of Rainforests Are Logged

The first comprehensive, satellite-based assessment of industrial logging practices in Malaysian Borneo has shown that more than 80 percent of the region's forests have been heavily impacted by logging. Reporting in the journal PLOS One, researchers from Australia,

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Logging damage in Malaysian Borneo.

New Guinea, and the U.S. say that Malaysian Borneo — which just 30 years ago was considered one of the wildest places on Earth — now has been eaten away by 226,000 miles of roads that have enabled companies to legally and illegally log most of the territory, which consists of the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. At best, only 17,500 square miles of forest ecosystems remain intact, the study said. "The extent of logging in Sabah and Sarawak documented in our work is breathtaking," said study co-author Phil Shearman of the University of Papua New Guinea.