Destruction of a High Percentage of Iran's Wildlife Over the Past 40 Years

The director general of the Environmental Protection Agency in Lorestan province states that over the past four decades, "80 percent of animal species" in Iran have been lost. ISNA news agency reported this on Thursday (November 9), citing Mehrdad Fathi Biranvand. In the report, Mr. Biranvand mentions the destruction of "80 percent of the country's animals" in one instance and "80 percent of animal species" in another. It is not specified whether this statistic refers to the total population of animals in Iran or the number of extinct species. According to the director general of the Environmental Protection Agency in Lorestan, this animal destruction has also occurred in Lorestan province, with "many areas" in the province being "devoid of wildlife." This environmental official further criticized that "due to neglect and excessive demands" on the environment, dangerous challenges have arisen in the country. Fathi Biranvand stated that "tens of hectares of natural areas are consumed by fire annually, and the conversion of forest lands and drying of wetlands are among the neglects towards nature." He added that environmental threats in the world and Iran are so serious that "no agency or government can claim that it alone has the ability to tackle these issues." The director general of the Environmental Protection Agency in Lorestan also called for strengthening "environmental culture" and "involving" the public in environmental preservation by government agencies. In 2015, Mohammad Darvish, the director general of education and public participation at the Environmental Protection Agency, also stated that over 90 percent of the country's wildlife has been lost over four decades. Mr. Darvish mentioned that "when the Environmental Protection Agency was established, there were 1.3 million deer, gazelles, wild asses, rams, ewes, and goats living in Iran, but now this number has dropped to less than 110,000." He added that "a land where goats, leopards, and cheetahs cannot live is certainly in poor condition and the food of this land is not healthy. This is how, according to the Minister of Health, we must spend 10 billion and 200 million tomans annually (which is 60 times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency) on anti-cancer drugs." The remaining Asian cheetahs in Iran are estimated to be between 37 and 50 individuals. The Iranian leopard, with fewer than 500 individuals, is also classified as "endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, yet this has not prevented their killing in Iran. In the same year, the then deputy of natural environment at the Environmental Protection Agency announced that the existence of "two million legal and illegal hunting weapons, excessive hunting, and habitat destruction pose threats to and the extinction of the country's wildlife." According to Farhad Dabiri, "the disaster we have brought upon animals is alarming, and while we feel we are making the right decisions, we have destroyed many species and disrupted the cycle of life." Hooshang Ziaei, a senior environmental expert, believes that "70 percent of the causes of wildlife destruction" in the country are related to "excessive hunting" and "only 30 percent" are related to habitat destruction. Mr. Ziaei warned about the increase in the number of hunters in the country and the remaining population of environmental guards being the same as their population before the revolution.