TEHRAN – On Thursday, a UNESCO certificate for the Hyrcanian Forests was unveiled and installed near the centuries-old Rudkhan fortress in northern Iran.

The unveiling ceremony was attended by several local officials, travel insiders, environmentalists, and cultural heritage enthusiasts, CHTN reported.

A unique forested massif that extends from Iran’s Golestan province to the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Hyrcanian Forests form a green arc of forest, separated from the Caucasus to the west and from semi-desert areas to the east.

That Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests ecoregion stretches approximately one thousand kilometers along the southern and south-western coast of the Caspian Sea and covers around 7% of the remaining Hyrcanian forests in Iran.

The UNESCO-listed property is a serial site with 17 component parts shared across three provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, and Golestan in Iran and across two districts of Lenkoran and Astara in Azerbaijan and represents examples of the various stages and features of Hyrcanian forest ecosystems.

As mentioned by the UN body, most of the ecological characteristics of the Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests are represented in the property. A considerable part of the property is in inaccessible steep terrain. The property contains exceptional and ancient broad-leaved forests which were formerly much more extensive but retreated during periods of glaciation and later expanded under milder climatic conditions.

Due to this isolation, the property hosts many relicts, endangered, and regionally and locally endemic species of flora, contributing to the high ecological value of the property and the Hyrcanian region in general.

AFM