Read the following passage and answer the following questions.

Ecological research over the last quarter of the century has established the deleterious effects of habitat fragmentation due to mining, highways and such other intrusions on forests. When a large block of forests gets fragmented into smaller bits, the edges of all these bits come into contact with human activities resulting in the degradation of the entire forests. Continuity of forested landscapes and corridors gets disrupted affecting several extinction-prone species of wildlife. Habitat fragmentation is there fore considered as the most serious threat to biodiversity conservation. Ad hoc grants of forest lands to mining companies coupled with rampant illegal mining is aggravating this threat.