A Nicaraguan canal? A China-backed plan to cut a new canal across Central America threatens vital wildlife and wetlands, warn experts.

In the current edition of the journal Nature, two prominent environmental scientists warn that the project threatens "environmental disaster" for Nicaragua. At risk are "some of the most fragile, pristine and scientifically important" regions of Central America, they warn.

National Geographic spoke with comment co-author Jorge A. Huete-Pérez, director of the Centro de Biología Molecular at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua. Huete-Pérez is also the president of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences.

Huete-Pérez wrote the piece with Axel Meyer, a professor of zoology and evolutionary biology at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

It would be prudent for any government to