TEHRAN – The first wildlife breeding center in North Khorasan province will be established by a private-sector investor, Mehdi Allahpour, head of the provincial department of the environment, has stated.

“The Maral (red deer) will be transferred from Pardisan Park in Bojnourd city to this breeding center in Jajarm city.

In addition to the breeding site, a natural recreation center will be set up in the province.

A private-sector investor has also announced readiness to establish the urial breeding site in Bojnourd, he explained.

“We welcome the activities of private sector investors who are qualified to protect vulnerable species as well as wildlife breeding projects.”

Maral, the Iranian red deer, is one of the largest deer types that unfortunately their population has declined in the country. However, the red deer occur literally from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the high alpine meadows of the Alborz Mountains.

In North Khorasan, there are 65 mammals out of 197 species in the country and 141 species of birds out of 532 species, 68 reptiles out of 228 species, four species of amphibians out of 20, and eight species of fish and aquatic species out of 160 species, some of which, such as cheetahs, saker falcon, bustards, Caspian snowcock and Egyptian vulture, which are in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in critical and endangered categories.

Sustainable exploitation of biodiversity a must

Today, all governments have come to the conclusion that all aspects of human life, as well as growth and development, depend on biodiversity.

All three pillars of biodiversity namely, variation at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels are important and must be considered to ensure biodiversity preserve; any damage to any of these three pillars will damage the entire biodiversity and pose a serious threat to human life.

 “Indeed, Iran is not one of the megadiverse countries, like Brazil, India, and Malaysia, but it has habitats with the richest biodiversity.

However, various factors such as sustainable exploitation of biodiversity should come to the center of attention to better protect the country’s biodiversity, to do so, help local communities earn income, and biodiversity can also benefit from local communities’ protection,” Shahaboddin Montazemi, director of the wildlife's conservation office at the DOE told the Tehran Times in June.

He went on to say that “the DOE has taken extensive measures in various areas such as habitat, species, and genetics; as animal species in the country include 37 species of mammals, 78 bird species, 22 species of reptiles, 6 species of bivalves, and 25 species of fish of inland waters.

The organization's gene bank is also a major step toward the genetic protection of species.”

FB/MG