TEHRAN – A 63-year-old woman has made a strong friendship with an endangered animal by taking care of a maral (the Iranian red deer), IRIB reported on Sunday.

In March, the woman founded a wounded maral in Chahardangeh District in northern Mazandaran Province and tried to cure the deer. And now this endangered animal has become a close friend of the woman after eight months.

Now, the deer lives on the grandmother’s farm, and she has asked the Department of Environment to send a mate for her friend.

Maral, along with “Roe deer” and “Persian fallow deer”, are three species of deer in Iran.

The Iranian red deer is one of the largest deer types that unfortunately their population has declined in the country. However, the red deer occur literally from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the high alpine meadows of the Alborz Mountains.

The mating of red deer begins in the second half of September each year and lasts for a month.

According to the latest monitoring in maral habitats during the mating season, the population of this species in Golestan National Park has been counted 612, which was recorded 540 last years, director of Golestan National Park Mehdi Teymouri said.

Road construction, land-use change and livestock overgrazing in the Hyrcanian forests, and, most importantly, the presence of poachers are among the main factors influencing the decline of the maral population.

More than 2,000 marals lived in the park, according to the animal population census of the late 1970s, which dropped by 80 percent to about 200 in the early 2010s, he stated.

FB/MG