TEHRAN - Legal boundaries of the UNESCO-designated Hyrcanian Forests have recently been declared to the governor-general of Gilan province.

Minister of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Ali-Asghar Mounesan announced the legal boundaries on Sunday in a letter to the governor-general of the northern province, IRNA reported.

According to the communiqué, the demarcated forests and their properties are under the supervision of Gilan’s cultural heritage, tourism, and handicrafts department, and any encroachment on the area and violation of the protection rules is a crime and the perpetrator is subject to legal penalties.

Hyrcanian Forests (also known as Caspian Forests), extends from the south of Azerbaijan to about 900 km to the east to the Iranian northern provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, and Golestan. This forest forms the outermost boundary of the west-Eurasian nemoral deciduous forests to alpine thorn cushion corridors and forest-free dry vegetation of the Iranian highlands and Central Asia.

The Hyrcanian Forests cover the northern slope of the Alborz Mountain in Iran at the southern edge of the Caspian Sea and it contains very rich ecosystems due to the particular orographic and climatic situation (precipitation rich, warm-temperate, high moisture from the Caspian Sea and damming effect of the Alborz Mountain range).

According to UNESCO, the forests contain the most significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation. It also contains superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance.

It is an outstanding example in the record of significant ongoing geological processes in the development of landforms and significant geomorphic or physiographic features. It is also a significant example representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, ecosystems and communities of plants.

AFM