Forest Archives - Iran News Daily

Official: Elit forest fire under control

siavash — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 06:55:06 +0000

Official: Elit forest fire under control

TEHRAN (Iran News) Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Sajedi said plans have been implemented to control and extinguish the fire in Elit forest based on expert assessment which have fortunately achieved significant success.

Meanwhile, Governor of Mazandaran Mahdi Younesi said that the operation to control the fire in Elit forests is still ongoing.

Due to the topography, climate changes, and drought, the number of teams were increased to 40, he added.

He noted that 520 personnel, along with eight helicopters and two Ilyushin aircraft, are actively operating in the area.

Elit forests in Marzanabad caught fire twice. The first time, the fire occurred on November 1, 2025, and was eventually extinguished after several days of efforts by emergency forces. And, the second time, the fire broke out on November 15. By deployment of three helicopters and the efforts of emergency teams and local people, a significant portion of the fire in these forests has been contained; however, a small area is still burning.

Meanwhile, Governor of Mazandaran Mahdi Younesi said that the operation to control the fire in Elit forests is still ongoing.

Due to the topography, climate changes, and drought, the number of teams were increased to 40, he added.

He noted that 520 personnel, along with eight helicopters and two Ilyushin aircraft, are actively operating in the area.

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Annual budget for forest protection doubles

mahla — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:28:33 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iran has increased the budget for forest protection by two folds in the national budget bill for the current [Iranian calendar] calendar year (started on March 20), head of the Forests, Rangelands, and Watershed Management Organization (FRWMO) has said.

A total of 5.3 trillion rials (around $126 million at the official rate of 42,000 rials) has been proposed for forest protection in the budget bill, which shows an increase of 50 percent compared to the last year’s budget, Masoud Mansour stated, IRNA reported on Tuesday.

According to the budget bill, the FRWMO budget should be used for different measures of watershed management, soil protection, desertification, rehabilitation, development and proper exploitation of forests and rangelands, empowerment of local communities and etc.

Last year, about 47,000 hectares of damaged forests were covered by a development and reforestation plan, he said.

According to the measures taken to reduce wood smuggling in the northern forests of the country, last year compared to the same period a year before, wood logging decreased by 30 percent and the number of discoveries by 20 percent.

Mansour explained that today, inside the protected forests, we are witnessing a decrease in the level of density, which needs to be controlled, and by implementing the Hyrcanian forest aerial surveys, the destruction of northern forests can be prevented.

Currently, the first phase will be piloted on about 100 km, and it is planned to expand the project to all northern forests and a year later to all forests across the country, he stated.

The proposed budget amounted to about 24.357 quadrillion rials (about $580 billion), with a 20-percent rise from last year’s budget.

Supplying basic goods, treatment, and medical equipment; securing livelihood; supporting production and employment; promoting and supporting non-oil exports and knowledge-based companies are the focal points of the bill.

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Spanish Firefighters, Troops Battle Wildfire outside Madrid

reporter 1222 — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 12:12:27 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Spanish firefighters and military emergency personnel battled amid blistering heat on Monday to control a wildfire in the Madrid region that had burned through the night and forced the evacuation of several houses.

The Spanish director of Madrid’s emergency services said early on Monday that firefighters had established a perimeter around the blaze and would now deploy aircraft to drop water on the flames.

“There is no risk to any population right now. We will be well prepared if the fire changes course،” Carlos Novillo said in a video posted to social media، Reuters reported.

Helicopter footage showed thick clouds of black smoke billowing up from steep scrubby slopes.

A spokeswoman for the emergency services confirmed a handful of isolated houses had been evacuated as a precautionary measure but no communities were at risk.

She could not confirm the source of the fire، which comes amid a heatwave across southern Europe that has sent temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Spain، leaving it highly vulnerable.

Madrid emergency services said 16 crews, as well as three aircraft, were deployed to tame the blaze around the sparsely populated Robledo de Chavela region، 40km (25 miles) northwest of the Spanish capital.

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Action Needed to Save Asia-Pacific’s Forests: UN

reporter 1222 — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 06:00:39 +0000

Highlighting the ongoing decline of biodiversity and resilience in natural forests in the Asia-Pacific region, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in its newest comprehensive report regarding the future of forest in Asia-Pacific region has asked country members to take firm measures to reverse this trend.

According to the report titled “Forest Future: Sustainable pathways for forests, landscapes and people in the Asia-Pacific region,” forests and landscapes in the Asia-Pacific region are under increasing pressure from climate change, economic growth, infrastructure development, forest conversion, conflicts and other stressors. Biodiversity and ecosystem resilience in natural forests are declining along with the capacity of these forests to deliver water and soil protection, climate regulation, and other important factors.

This report finds that sustainable development will only be achieved in the region if we commit to transformational change by working cross-sectorally and across borders, investing massively to restore forests and landscapes, reforming forest tenure and outdated institutions, empowering communities, and embracing innovation.

This new FAO publication asserts that demand for forest products and ecosystem services goes beyond borders. Water, wildlife, fire and forest pests don’t recognize administrative or sectoral boundaries.

Primary forests are those forests largely unaffected by human activities, and they are therefore extremely important for biodiversity conservation and other reasons. Of the region’s 723 million hectares of forest, this reports reveals that, only 19 percent (140 million hectares) is primary, which is much lower than the global average (32 percent). The conservation of primary forests in the region and the sustainable management of other natural forests are urgently needed to safeguard biodiversity, ecosystem services and the quality and health of the physical environment.

According to FAO report the region’s population is projected to grow from 4.1 billion people in 2017 to 4.7 billion in 2050. Home to 55 percent of the world’s population, the Asia-Pacific region contains only 18 percent of global forests. There is an urgent need for societies to reduce consumption, increase reuse, and sustainably produce biomaterials in forests. We need to find innovative ways to balance competing demands that will benefit us all.

Realizing an aspirational future – and avoiding catastrophic outcomes – FAO urges all countries in the region to implement the seven robust actions recommended in this report. These are to 1) adopt adaptive landscape management; 2) increase cooperation among stakeholders; 3) improve forest quality; 4) invest in alternative economic models; 5) achieve good forest governance; 6) build resilience; and 7) commit sufficient resources for forest and landscape management. With strong political will, these actions will give countries the best chance of ensuring the sustainability of ecosystems, economies and communities.

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Ashkan Dejagah to leave Forest this summer

reporter 1222 — Thu, 17 May 2018 09:10:54 +0000

TEHRAN – Iranian international midfielder Ashkan Dejagah will leave championships side Nottingham Forest.

Forest finished the season in 17th place with 53 points, two points better off than a year ago.

At the top, Wolves secured promotion and an impressive 99 points, followed by Cardiff, with Fulham, Aston Villa, Middlesbrough and Derby settling for places in the play-offs.

Dejagah, who is out of contract this summer, signed a short-term deal until the end of the season when he joined as a free agent during the January window.

Nottingham Forest have published their retained list following the end of the 2017/18 campaign – and officially confirmed that Chris Cohen, David Vaughan, Jack Hobbs and Ashkan Dejagah will not be offered new deals.

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Wildfire raging northern Iran forests

reporter 1222 — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 08:30:18 +0000

TEHRAN– Wildfire, starting on Saturday, is sweeping through forests in northern province of Gilan, Isna reported.

Forests situated in Lahijan, Siyahkal, Langeroud, Shaft, and Masal are burning in fire since Saturday evening.

Heat waves are believed to set the stage for the wildfires.

Police, firefighters, Red Crescent, and natural resources forces as well as the locals are striving to extinguish the fire.

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UN schemes to save forests ‘can trample on tribal rights’

reporter 1222 — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 09:00:21 +0000

The only UN-approved financial mechanism to curb deforestation, a key driver of global warming, has bulldozed the rights of forest-dwelling peoples on three continents and needs to be fixed, experts say.

The latest sign that these schemes — which pay to restore tropical forests rather than cut them down — are falling short comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where 20 pilot projects in Mai-Ndombe province have upended indigenous communities, according to a detailed report from the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a Washington DC-based research group.

Backed by the DRC government and international financing, private companies that manage huge tracts of forest have ignored the land rights of local peoples, engineered displacements, and avoided prior consent requirements, the report says.

They have also failed to share the windfall such programmes can bring, said lead author Marine Gauthier, who has monitored the projects in the western province of Mai-Ndombe since 2012.

“Indigenous peoples simply do not benefit from REDD+ because there is no benefit-sharing plan in place,” she told AFP, using the UN acronym for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.

So far, more than $90 million (73 million euros) have been disbursed or committed in the province for forest-related climate change projects.

Funding from Norway, France, Britain, the European Union and the United States, along with private sources and NGOs, is funnelled through the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.

Destroying forests intensifies global warming in two ways.

Losing a wooded area the size of Greece each year not only reduces Earth’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, it releases huge amounts of the planet-warming gas into the atmosphere, accounting for nearly a fifth of global emissions.

– Tension unresolved –

Tropical forests provide livelihoods and anchor the cultural identities of at least 250 million indigenous people.

Research has shown that stewardship by local communities significantly slows the pace of deforestation.

“Unfortunately, REDD+ projects in the DRC — as currently structured — are channelling money to private sector actors who do not have the same incentives to protect the forests,” said Alain Frechette, RRI’s director of strategic analysis.

Negotiated under the UN’s 1992 climate change treaty, REDD+ projects began a decade ago, but many are on hold until 2020, when the mechanism’s “strategic framework” will be finalised.

In the meantime, it is a work in progress.

Indeed, pilot programmes in dozens of countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa have, all too often, shortchanged local communities and underperformed as a bulkhead against climate change — their primary goal.

“REDD+ is evolving in a context of rights abuses, displacement and dispossession, threats and harassment over territories, and the repression and assassination of environmental activists by state and private forces,” the non-profit Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) found in a 2017 review of academic literature.

More than 200 environmental campaigners, nearly half from indigenous tribes, were murdered around the world in 2016 alone, according to watchdog Global Witness.

– Corruption a key concern –

“It is unclear how indigenous peoples will benefit from REDD+,” the CIFOR review concluded.

“The tension between conserving carbon stocks” — the CO2 locked in standing forests — “and providing rights and livelihoods has not been solved.”

Corruption in countries with weak governance has been a major concern.

In the DRC — home to 50 percent of Africa’s tropical forests — abuses related to land tenure conflicts have also turned violent, though not, so far, within REDD+ projects, Gauthier said.

As far back as the 1970s, some 6,000 Batwa Pygmies were forcibly expelled from the Kahuzi Biega National Park — collateral damage to a conservation project.

In Mai-Ndombe, another group of pygmies were recently barred by foreign concession holders with a REDD+ contract from using traditional slash-and-burn agriculture because their ancestral forests had already been severely degraded by industrial logging operations.

“The situation is highly conflictual,” said Gauthier.

By design, REDD+ pays to reduce CO2 emissions from deforestation, but not for keeping healthy forests intact.

This, critics say, can create perverse incentives.

A company in Mai-Ndombe, for example, recently cleared a wooded area under a logging concession, and then applied for a “conservation concession” on the same tract.

“After getting money from harvesting the trees, in other words, they want to get REDD+ money to plant some more,” Gauthier said.

The solution, many experts say, is not to scrap REDD+.

“REDD+ has brought unparalleled attention to the importance of forests in the global strategy to fight climate change,” said Frechette.

“But there are fundamental flaws in its conception, especially the lack of importance given to rights of indigenous peoples. It needs to be fixed.”

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