"21,000 hectares" of Iranian forests were affected by fire in 2020
The deputy deputy for forest affairs at the Iranian Forests, Rangelands and Watershed Management Organization says that during 2020, more than 21,000 hectares of Iranian forests and forest lands were affected by fires.
Reza Bayani said on Sunday, April 1, that one of our problems over the past year was the occurrence of "many fires" in the country's forests.
He added: "3,650 hectares of our natural forests in Iran and 1,034 hectares of man-made forests were involved in the fire." "We also had fires in an area of about 16,589 hectares of forest land. This means that in total, more than 21,000 hectares of our forests were involved in the fire during 2019."
Mr. Bayani said that most fires in 2020 occurred in forested areas, especially in the Zagros vegetation zone and the Gulf of Oman.
Forest fires and destruction are not limited to the aforementioned regions, and in recent years, dozens of fires have occurred in the forests of the north and northwest of the country.
Masoud Molana, a member of the Iranian Environment and Natural Resources Coordination Council, said in July 2019, "Out of the three million and six hundred thousand hectares of forests in the north of the country, only one million and eight hundred thousand hectares remain, and 90 percent of them have also gone out of a sustainable state."
On July 4th of the same year, the Hyrcanian forests were registered as Iran's second natural heritage on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
A year earlier, Hadi Kiadliri, head of the Iranian Forestry Association, had said that "42 percent" of the forests in northern Iran were at risk of "destruction" and that if the current trend continues, there would be no more forests in these areas within the next 30 years.
Iran has over 14 million hectares of forest land. According to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), this figure was over 18 million hectares at the beginning of the revolution.
Apart from fires, in recent years, many reports have been published about deforestation, the sale of forest soil, industrial projects that destroy forests, and the conversion of forests and pastures into agricultural areas.
Source: Radio Farda
