Roads and environmental degradation are generally inter linked. The project envisages broadening of some segments of existing road lengths, conversion of foot paths and cart tracks to jeepable roads and construction of new 8 km long and 10 m wide road between Sairang and the proposed airport location. Improved and expanded road network can be considered as a causal agent in the degradation of forested tracts. Because of relatively slow growth, low productivity and often poor soils on the steep and unstable slopes, these forests have little resilience to human-induced disturbances. Construction of a new road and the conversion of existing tracks into metalled surfaces are likely to increase erodability and natural instability of the natural forest tracts in the area between Sairang and the airport and also the project site where the roads become vital means for movement of material, machinery and manpower (Plate 7). Roads can be sources of rockfalls as rubble from construction and maintenance is pushed off the side, leaving large downslope scars. High rainfall, topographical features and inadequate drainage systems together would make compacted road surfaces important contributors to runoff and slope instability. The construction of roads and infrastructural expansion (Project office, residential complexes and rest house) would be the only activities that would never cease during the entire phase of the project (Plate 8) but are likely to continue until the expansion phase of the proposed airport.

The fragmentation of natural vegetation resulting from road construction and infrastructural development is however not being considered as a significant impact given the fairly low diversity of floral and faunal components in the project site. On the same count, deforestation and fragmentation that are expected to be outcome of peripheral urban development schemes in future are not being visualised as significant impacts. What cannot be overlooked is the fact that construction and maintenance of roads do provide access to new settlers. New road may create an enlarged market for products that earlier had only subsistence value. Increased demands for marketable resources like timber, orchids, medicinal plants, bamboo, agricultural crops and vegetables may lead to their increased unsustainable commercialization.