Iran's Forest Area Exceeds 14.3 Million Ha

The Head of High Council of FRWO announced that the area of natural and planted forests in Iran exceeds 14.3 million hectares.

According to FRWO's website, Dr. Kamran Pourmoghaddam, Head of High Council of FRWO said that based on the latest statistics, the area of natural and planted forests in Iran exceeds14.3 million hectares that are scattered throughout the country.

He added that forests in Iran are located in five vegetation zones, including about 2 million hectares of the Hyrcanian zone in the north of the country (Caspian forests) some 6 million hectares of forest is the Zagros in the west,  4 million in Irani and Turanian zone in the central and eastern parts, 2 million hectares of the forests in the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea zone and about 160 thousand hectares in Arasbaran.

Pourmoghaddam stated that based on Article15 of the "Agriculture and Natural Resources Productivity Law ", the forest cover per capita should increase from 0.17 hectares to 0.25 hectares. In other words it should reach to 2500 square meters (from 1700) within a decade that hopefully with the acceleration of activities in the two recent consecutive years we are close to our target."

He emphasized that forest development and plantation operations have been intensified in 2018 and 2019, due to especial attention to IWM plan and allocation of considerable budget from National Development Fund to IWM projects."

Pourmoghaddam cited the participation of local communities in tree-planting activities as an effective approach to forest development at national level and said: "We should also make optimum use of participatory mechanism in forest conservation area."

He added: "In this direction FRWO has signed several agreements with NGOs and other governmental and non-governmental organizations including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ministry of Education, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iran, clergy groups etc in the framework of the" National Green Movement (NGM)."