Editor’s Note: Why We Are Featuring Iran Now

Iran is once again dominating headlines.

From widespread public demonstrations that surged across Iran in late 2025 into early this year, to the current escalation and the breaking of war, the country is being discussed globally in the context of politics, conflict, and human suffering. The loss of life and instability unfolding are real and devastating. Nothing in this feature is intended to diminish that reality.

But there is something else that often goes unspoken.

For years, inside and outside of environmental circles, people have quietly asked me a question. Sometimes with curiosity. Sometimes with hesitation. Sometimes almost with guilt.

“What is actually there?”

They were referring to biodiversity.

In today’s world, there is pressure to already know. When the breadth of human knowledge appears to sit at our fingertips, asking basic questions can feel uncomfortable. If a place overlaps with your professional field or your moral concern, you are expected to understand it fully.

Curiosity, however, should never carry shame.

At SEVENSEAS Media, we see questions as bridges. When a region becomes defined only by conflict, it becomes even more important to remember that it is also defined by landscapes, species, ecosystems, culture, and people who have lived in relationship with nature for millennia.

Iran is not only a geopolitical flashpoint. It is a country of vast mountain ranges, ancient forests, wetlands, deserts, coral communities, migratory flyways, and one of the most strategically significant marine corridors in the world. It sits at the intersection of terrestrial and marine biodiversity, connecting ecosystems across Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian Ocean.

It is home to coastal communities whose fishing traditions stretch back centuries, to wetlands that host migratory birds crossing continents, and to marine systems that sustain life far beyond their shorelines.

This feature has been in development for some time. In light of current events, we believe it is important to move forward thoughtfully and with care.

Education is not a distraction from suffering. It is part of long term resilience.

At SEVENSEAS Media, we promote education and peace across cultures and living in harmony with nature. We believe that understanding biodiversity can humanize places that are otherwise reduced to headlines. Conservation, at its best, transcends politics and builds shared responsibility for the natural world.

In the articles that follow, we explore the geography of Iran, its terrestrial biodiversity, its migratory importance, and its ocean and coastal ecosystems. We touch on traditional fishing cultures, current pressures, conservation challenges, and the organizations working to protect what remains.

As always, we are not here to simplify complexity. We are here to make space for informed curiosity and careful understanding.

In moments of conflict, it can feel easier to look away. We choose instead to look closer, and to recognize that ecological systems persist regardless of political borders.

This story is developing rapidly. Details may shift as the situation evolves. Last verified: March 3, 2026.

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Iran sits at the center of a fast moving regional war that has already spilled into the maritime domain. Attacks affecting commercial shipping, electronic interference with navigation signals, and heightened risk to seafarers, alongside international warnings, diplomatic activity, and emergency maritime guidance addressing commercial shipping safety. This article is not about the conflict itself, but to write about Iranian coastal ecosystems we must acknowledge the immediate reality that the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman are currently under exceptional strain, and that ecological harm can escalate quickly when navigation, port operations, and safety at sea are compromised.

That is precisely why biodiversity deserves attention now. Iran’s living landscapes, from ancient temperate forests to mangrove channels and coral communities, are not a side story. They are the fabric that sustains food systems, coastal livelihoods, and cultural identity. They are also a record of resilience in a region where climate stress, water scarcity, and rapid coastal development have been reshaping ecosystems for decades.

Iran’s total area is often cited at roughly 1.65 million square kilometers, with the World Bank reporting land area of 1,622,500 square kilometers for 2023. The country spans sharp ecological gradients: the Caspian coast in the north, the Zagros and Alborz mountain systems, arid interior plateaus, and two very different southern marine frontiers, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. This geographic spread helps explain why Iran features prominently in national and international biodiversity planning, and why conservation challenges vary so dramatically across regions. Iran’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan, submitted under the Convention on Biological Diversity, lays out the country’s own framing of pressures and priorities, from habitat loss and water stress to the need for stronger monitoring and management capacity.

Protected areas offer one useful, if imperfect, lens on how much land is being set aside for nature. Using a standardized indicator based on the World Database on Protected Areas, the World Bank reports terrestrial protected areas at about 8.6 percent of Iran’s land area in 2024. On paper, that number may sound substantial. On the ground, protection effectiveness depends on funding, enforcement, and community legitimacy, and those are harder variables to measure, especially during periods of economic constraint and heightened political tension.

To understand Iran’s coastal biodiversity, it helps to start with two pieces of context that sit inland but shape the seas. The first is the northern forest belt. The Hyrcanian Forests, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, represent a rare temperate broadleaf forest system with deep evolutionary history and high plant diversity. UNESCO notes the antiquity of these forests and documents thousands of vascular plant species, along with significant bird and mammal richness. Forest integrity matters for the coast because watersheds and rivers regulate sediment, nutrients, and pollutants that end up in deltas, lagoons, and nearshore nurseries.

The second is migratory biodiversity, which is tightly linked to wetlands. Iran is one of the countries most closely associated with the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, which was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971. Iran’s country profile under Ramsar lists 27 Ramsar sites covering 1,494,371 hectares. These wetlands are not only local biodiversity reservoirs, they are stepping stones for migratory birds across Eurasia, and they connect inland water decisions to coastal fisheries and estuarine health.

Wetlands also reveal how biodiversity can unravel when hydrology collapses. Lake Urmia, once among the world’s great hypersaline lakes, has experienced severe drying over recent decades. A 2024 peer reviewed study in Bird Conservation International documents major consequences for waterbird assemblages, linking long term ecological change to declining water availability and rising salinity conditions. This inland story matters for a marine and coastal article because it illustrates a broader theme across Iran and the wider region: biodiversity is often limited less by what species could live there, and more by whether water, habitat connectivity, and governance can sustain them.

Southern seas and coastal habitats

Iran’s southern coastline stretches along two connected but ecologically distinct marine systems. The Persian Gulf is shallow and naturally extreme, with high salinity and large seasonal temperature swings. These conditions shape everything from coral survival thresholds to fish distribution, and they amplify the stakes of climate warming. The Gulf of Oman, opening toward the Arabian Sea, is more oceanic, with deeper waters and different circulation patterns, and it links Iran’s coast to broader Indian Ocean dynamics.

Across both southern seas, four habitat types carry disproportionate weight for biodiversity and fisheries productivity: mangroves, seagrass meadows, coral communities, and intertidal flats and estuaries. When these habitats are intact and connected, they function as nurseries and feeding grounds that support coastal fish, invertebrates, birds, and megafauna. When they are fragmented, the loss cascades through food webs and into human livelihoods.

Mangroves are the clearest example of a habitat that concentrates biodiversity and also concentrates human dependence. A widely cited scientific overview of Iranian mangrove ecosystems, published in Acta Ecologica Sinica, synthesizes where mangroves occur along Iran’s coasts and why they matter ecologically. In Iran, mangroves are strongly associated with tidal channels and deltas, and they are often dominated by Avicennia marina. Their ecological value is not simply that they are “trees by the sea.” Mangroves create structure in an otherwise shifting environment, producing sheltered water, organic matter, and microhabitats that support fish, crabs, mollusks, and juvenile stages of many species important to fisheries. They also store carbon in sediments and provide some buffering against storms and shoreline change, benefits that are increasingly relevant as climate risks intensify.

One of the most important mangrove anchored seascapes in Iran is the Hara Biosphere Reserve, recognized under UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme. UNESCO describes the reserve as located in the Mehran River delta near the Straits of Khuran, adjacent to Qeshm Island, and identifies its Avicennia mangrove ecosystem as the basis for its biodiversity significance. UNESCO’s page lists an area of 206,243 hectares. The same broader system is also recognized under Ramsar as the Khuran Straits wetland, which Ramsar describes as extensive intertidal flats, saltmarsh, mangroves, and numerous creeks and islands. These overlapping designations do not automatically guarantee protection, but they show that the area is internationally recognized for its ecological functions.

Seagrass meadows are often less visible than mangroves, but they play a similar role as nurseries and as food sources for some marine herbivores. Seagrass supports juvenile fish and invertebrates, stabilizes sediments, and can influence local water clarity. In many parts of the Persian Gulf, seagrass is also associated with marine megafauna foraging, including sea turtles. A central challenge in writing about seagrass along Iran’s coast is that long term, coastwide mapping and monitoring are less consistently accessible in the public literature than for mangroves and some coral sites. That gap matters because seagrass is highly sensitive to dredging, coastal construction, and water quality shifts, and it is easy to lose without noticing until productivity declines.

Coral communities are a third pillar of southern biodiversity. Coral reefs in the Persian Gulf exist under conditions that would be stressful for many tropical reef systems, yet they persist in multiple locations, including around islands. This makes them scientifically important as a window into resilience and limits. Recent peer reviewed work in Scientia Marina synthesized the state of coral bleaching across the Persian Gulf and highlighted how marine heatwaves and warming trends are reshaping reef health in the region. Iran’s reef communities are part of that broader story. Coral health is not only about biodiversity for its own sake. Coral structure influences fish habitat, coastal tourism value, and shoreline protection in some settings. When coral declines, the physical complexity that supports many reef associated species can erode, and recovery is often slow, especially under repeated heat stress.

Intertidal flats and estuaries are the fourth habitat type that repeatedly emerges as ecologically load bearing. Mudflats, tidal creeks, and estuarine channels support migratory birds, benthic invertebrates, and juvenile fish. They are also often the first places where pollution accumulates, and the first places where coastal engineering, dredging, and port expansion produce irreversible change.

Islands and offshore biodiversity

Iran’s southern islands concentrate biodiversity, cultural history, and development pressures in a small footprint. They also serve as focal points for conservation designations and ecological research because they can host coral communities, nesting beaches, and productive nearshore waters shaped by currents.

Qeshm Island is the most prominent example, not least because of its proximity to the mangrove systems of the Khuran Straits and the Hara Biosphere Reserve. In practical ecological terms, the island seascape is a mosaic: mangrove channels and mudflats on one side, more exposed coasts on others, and a blend of local fishing, shipping traffic, and tourism.

Several islands are also significant for sea turtles. Sheedvar Island, for example, is listed by Ramsar as a wetland site, reflecting the ecological value of the island and its surrounding marine environment. Turtle nesting in Iran is often spatially concentrated, which makes it vulnerable to localized disturbance. A peer reviewed paper in Chelonian Conservation and Biology focused on hawksbill turtle nesting and conservation conditions at Sheedvar Island, underscoring the role of specific island beaches for reproduction. When nesting habitat is limited to a small set of sites, artificial lighting, beach disturbance, and fishing related interactions can have outsized population effects.

Marine mammals are another crucial part of Iran’s coastal biodiversity, and also a window into how much remains under documented. The Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, Sousa plumbea, is among the best studied in Iranian waters, particularly around protected coastal areas. The Important Marine Mammal Area factsheet for Nakhiloo Coastal Waters describes a small resident population, notes photo identification research that documented dozens of individuals, and links the area to the Dayer Nakhiloo National Marine Park and its shallow mangrove associated waters. This kind of work matters because it moves marine mammals from anecdote to monitoring, and because it can guide practical mitigation, such as reducing bycatch risk, regulating high speed vessel traffic, and managing coastal development footprints.

Coastal life and fishing traditions

Biodiversity is not only species lists and habitat maps. It is also the daily relationship between people and the sea, especially in coastal provinces where fishing is food security, identity, and inherited knowledge.

A helpful entry point is the cultural heritage of seafaring itself. UNESCO’s documentation of the traditional skills of building and sailing Iranian lenj boats describes wooden vessels historically used for sea journeys, trade, fishing, and pearl diving, alongside navigation knowledge and weather forecasting traditions. This is not nostalgia. It is an illustration of how maritime life has long depended on reading winds, currents, seasonal cycles, and ecological cues, and how cultural systems develop around predictable patterns in marine environments.

Modern fisheries along Iran’s southern coasts are a blend of artisanal practices and more industrialized capacity, shaped by regulation, market demand, and regional competition. Some of the clearest, citable information on management measures comes from FAO linked materials. The FAO Fishery and Aquaculture Country Profile for Iran describes the country’s northern and southern coasts and provides a baseline overview of fisheries.

For a more specific and current window into gear and management, an FAO RECOFI workshop document titled Status of Fisheries in I.R. Iran includes concrete statements about trawling restrictions: it describes industrial bottom trawling as forbidden in the Persian Gulf since 1990 and in the Oman Sea since 2020, while allowing limited artisanal bottom trawling for shrimp under seasonal constraints. These details matter for biodiversity because trawling is among the fishing methods most directly linked to seabed disturbance and bycatch risk. Restrictions do not eliminate ecological impact, but they can reduce pressure, especially when paired with enforcement and gear improvements.

It is also important to recognize that fisheries culture cannot be separated from coastal economics. When livelihoods depend on catch, ecological decline becomes a household crisis, not an abstract conservation concern. That reality is one reason why data gaps are so consequential. If stock assessments are incomplete or politically constrained, decisions can drift toward short term survival rather than sustainable yields, especially during periods of inflation, sanctions, or conflict related disruption.

Strait of Hormuz and a crowded seascape

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most geopolitically significant maritime corridors on Earth, and it is also an ecological bottleneck in a quieter sense: it concentrates shipping density, underwater noise, pollution risk, and the pathways by which non native species can move via ballast water and hull fouling.

The United States Energy Information Administration describes the Strait of Hormuz as a critical oil transit chokepoint. That framing is usually economic, but the ecological implications are direct. A high traffic corridor raises the baseline probability of incidents, from collisions to spills. It also raises chronic stressors that can be harder to see, like persistent noise that affects dolphins and other marine life, and localized contamination around ports and anchorage zones.

In the current crisis, those risks have sharply intensified. Reuters has reported disruption to shipping in and around the Strait, including tankers stranded or damaged and broader market impacts. The International Maritime Organization has issued a statement emphasizing protection of seafarers and the fundamental principle of freedom of navigation. Wired has reported a surge in GPS and AIS interference in the Gulf region since the onset of the current campaign, warning of navigation hazards that elevate collision and spill risk. These are not biodiversity sources in the usual sense, but they are essential context because acute conflict related disruptions can translate into ecological harm on very short timescales.

For readers focused on biodiversity, the key point is not to turn an ecology story into a war story. The point is to recognize that when the Strait becomes unstable, the environmental stakes rise for everyone, including coastal communities who have no control over geopolitics but live with the consequences.

Institutions and research working in and near Iran

Even under political and economic constraints, biodiversity work in Iran is not isolated. It exists at the intersection of Iranian agencies, universities, civil society, and treaty based cooperation.

At the national policy level, Iran’s biodiversity strategy and action plan submitted under the Convention on Biological Diversity lays out institutional roles and planned actions, and it serves as an anchor document for how Iran presents its biodiversity priorities internationally. This does not mean implementation is straightforward, but it provides a reference point for programs, targets, and constraints.

On wetlands, UNDP has a long running Conservation of Iranian Wetlands Project, with a public project page describing ecosystem based approaches and capacity building in partnership with national stakeholders. UNDP has also published additional material describing outcomes and methods, including work linked to agricultural water use and wetland basin management. These efforts matter for marine and coastal biodiversity because Ramsar’s definition of wetlands includes coastal systems such as estuaries and tidal flats, and because inland water decisions can shape coastal productivity.

At the regional level, the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment, known as ROPME, is a core coordinating institution for the wider Gulf region. ROPME’s official site describes its establishment and purpose, and UNEP’s Kuwait Convention page describes ROPME’s objective to coordinate member state efforts to protect marine and coastal ecosystems against pollution and other stressors. In practical terms, regional organizations can be crucial for shared monitoring, pollution response coordination, and building consistent standards across borders in a sea where water and wildlife do not respect jurisdictional lines.

On cultural heritage, UNESCO’s documentation of Iranian lenj boats provides an example of how maritime culture can be treated as heritage worth safeguarding, which can complement conservation by reinforcing community identity and continuity.

Finally, international research frameworks such as Important Marine Mammal Areas show how biodiversity evidence can be synthesized into actionable place based priorities. The Nakhiloo Coastal Waters factsheet is an example of a source that is both scientifically grounded and designed to support management decisions, including in areas that face coastal development and fisheries interactions.

What to expect and what to watch

Iran’s coastal biodiversity sits at the intersection of three forces.

The first is climate stress. The Persian Gulf is already an extreme environment, and coral bleaching research across the region underscores how warming and heat events can push systems beyond recovery thresholds. Climate change also interacts with water management and land use decisions inland, as shown starkly in the Lake Urmia case, where reduced water availability and salinity shifts have reshaped bird communities over time.

The second is development pressure. Ports, coastal construction, and industrial zones can fragment habitats and degrade water quality, especially in shallow systems and estuaries. The habitats that matter most, mangroves, seagrass, mudflats, and nearshore reefs, are also the habitats most likely to be impacted by dredging and shoreline engineering.

The third is volatility. In March 2026, the war has created an acute layer of risk for the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, with real implications for shipping safety, spill probability, and coastal community stability. Biodiversity conservation is always difficult in politically complex environments. It becomes even harder when attention and resources are pulled toward immediate security and humanitarian needs.

And yet, there is a constructive way to think about this moment. Iran’s coasts are not defined only by threat. They are defined by a rare combination of ecological productivity and cultural depth: mangrove labyrinths that function as nurseries, islands that host nesting turtles, dolphins that still maintain resident populations in shallow coastal waters, and a maritime heritage that has adapted for centuries to seasonal rhythms and environmental extremes.

For readers outside Iran, the most useful stance is not pity or distance. It is curiosity paired with humility. Iran’s biodiversity is real, it is complex, and it is not reducible to headlines. If anything, the current crisis is a reminder that environmental literacy is not separate from human events. It is part of how we understand what is at risk, what endures, and what recovery could mean, for ecosystems and for the people who live with them.

References

• Reuters. Iran conflict disrupts global shipping as tankers are stranded, damaged.
• Wired. Attacks on GPS Spike Amid US and Israeli War on Iran.
• International Maritime Organization. Statement on the Strait of Hormuz.
• World Bank Data. Land area (sq. km) Iran, Islamic Rep.
• Convention on Biological Diversity. CBD Strategy and Action Plan, Islamic Republic of Iran (NBSAP2, 2016 to 2030).
• World Bank Data. Terrestrial protected areas percent of total land area Iran, Islamic Rep.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Hyrcanian Forests.
• Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Iran country profile.
• Shariati M, Hemami M R. The drying of Lake Urmia and its consequences for waterbird assemblages. Bird Conservation International. Cambridge University Press. Link.
• Zahed M A, Rouhani F, Mohajeri S, Bateni F. An overview of Iranian mangrove ecosystems, northern part of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. Acta Ecologica Sinica. ScienceDirect.
• UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. Hara.
• Ramsar Sites Information Service. Khuran Straits.
• Kavousi J, Tavakoli-Kolour P, Mohammadizadeh M, Bahrami A, Barkhordari A. Mass coral bleaching in the northern Persian Gulf, 2012. Sci. mar. Link.
• Ramsar Sites Information Service. Sheedvar Island.
• Shidvar hawksbill nesting and clutch success paper. Chelonian Conservation and Biology, BioOne.
• Important Marine Mammal Areas. Nakhiloo Coastal Waters IMMA factsheet.
• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Traditional skills of building and sailing Iranian Lenj boats in the Persian Gulf.
• FAO. Fishery and Aquaculture Country Profiles, Iran (Islamic Republic of).
• FAO RECOFI. Status of Fisheries in I.R. Iran. PDF.
• U.S. Energy Information Administration. World Oil Transit Chokepoints.
• UNDP Iran. Conservation of Iranian Wetlands Project Phase II.
• UNDP Iran. Story of a Joint Effort: Conservation of Iranian Wetlands Project.
• ROPME. Official website.
• UNEP. Kuwait Convention.