Iran's protected areas need more rangers.

The Protection Unit of Iran's Department of Environment (DoE) has long experienced a shortage of wildlife rangers ([ 1 ][1]), resulting in severely limited enforcement capabilities for the more than 191,000 km2 of protected areas nationally ([ 2 ][2]). This chronically inadequate administration of Iran's natural resource laws has resulted in unsustainable and illicit resource extraction, including tree smuggling [e.g., ([ 3 ][3])] and wildlife trafficking ([ 4 ][4]), with corresponding increases in wildlife poaching ([ 5 ][5]) and harassment [e.g., ([ 6 ][6])] in protected areas. The head of DoE's Protection Unit has recently made this issue public, including the goal of hiring 250 rangers annually ([ 1 ][1]) to address the 50% dearth in enforcement capacity. A new Iranian government will take charge on 3 August, and we encourage this government to support the hiring of rangers. This goal could be achieved by working with the Iranian Parliament as quickly as possible to allocate necessary budgets and revise current laws to allow Iran's Administrative and Recruitment Organization to remove unnecessary barriers to ranger recruitment ([ 1 ][1]). Effective natural resource protection would benefit Iran's people as well as its wildlife. The country's 32 national parks, 40 national natural heritage sites, 53 wildlife refuges, and 184 protected areas cannot meet conservation goals without fully staffed enforcement ([ 2 ][2]). 1. [↵][7]“The Head of Iran's Department of the Environment's Protection Unit: We are 50% short of wild-life rangers,” Tasnim News Agency (2021); [www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1400/03/31/2525493/][8] [in Farsi]. 2. [↵][9]“Fourteen areas were added to the protected areas under Iran's Department of the Environment's management,” Iranian Students' News Agency (2021); [www.isna.ir/news/99110806128/][10] [in Farsi]. 3. [↵][11]“A truck carrying smuggled trees was seized in the Abdolrazaq Protected Area,” Kurdistan Provincial Office of Iran's Department of the Environment (2021); [in Farsi]. 4. [↵][12]1. S. Khabaz , “Iran's Department of the Environment's silence about wildlife trafficking,” Mehr News Agency (2021); [in Farsi]. 5. [↵][13]1. A. Ghoddousi et al ., Oryx 53, 151 (2019). [OpenUrl][14] 6. [↵][15]“A two year-old Persian leopard was killed by humans in the Zharf No Hunting Area,” Razavi Khorasan Provincial Office of Iran's Department of the Environment (2021); [in Farsi]. [1]: #ref-1 [2]: #ref-2 [3]: #ref-3 [4]: #ref-4 [5]: #ref-5 [6]: #ref-6 [7]: #xref-ref-1-1 "View reference 1 in text" [8]: http://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1400/03/31/2525493/ [9]: #xref-ref-2-1 "View reference 2 in text" [10]: http://www.isna.ir/news/99110806128/ [11]: #xref-ref-3-1 "View reference 3 in text" [12]: #xref-ref-4-1 "View reference 4 in text" [13]: #xref-ref-5-1 "View reference 5 in text" [14]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DOryx%26rft.volume%253D53%26rft.spage%253D151%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [15]: #xref-ref-6-1 "View reference 6 in text"