TEHRAN -- More than three million hectares of forests have been destroyed in the country over the past 10 years, a university professor said here Monday.

Warning of the rapid destruction of the forests of the northern part of the country by timber traffickers, Jamshid Mansuri said, “Now the forest area covers less than one million hectares in the north.”
He lamented the increase in the construction of villas in forest land, especially in the environs of the city of Tonekabon, Mazandaran Province.
More studies are needed to demarcate appropriate places for housing construction, he explained.
Commenting on the Tehran-North Highway, which connects the capital to northern Iran, he said the project is “a potent symbol of negligence in preserving our existing woodlands.”
According to a study conducted by Karim Saei, the pioneer of the scientific method of forest management in Iran, about 18 million hectares of the country were covered in forest in 1948