When flames appeared over the Zagros, local residents again climbed toward the fire with shovels, branches and bottles of water, exposing a recurring failure: Iran’s largest oak landscape is burning faster than the state can protect it. This time, Taghi Changalvaei was one of those who went. He entered the fire to help save Khayiz, a protected area in the southern Zagros near Behbahan, in Khuzestan province. He did not return. For Zagros communities, his death was familiar. For years, local residents and environmental volunteers have been losing friends and relatives to fires that return each summer across the mountains.
Iranian media have reported that since 2020, 27 people have died while trying to control fires in the Zagros. Most were not professional firefighters. They had no specialized training, no protective clothing and little more than improvised tools. They went because the forests were burning, and because in many parts of the Zagros, people know that if they do not move first, help may arrive too late.
A landscape primed to burn
The Zagros Mountains run for about 1,600 kilometers, from northwestern Iran toward the Persian Gulf. Their oak woodlands cover almost six million hectares, roughly 40 percent of Iran’s forest area, and support millions of rural livelihoods while helping regulate water and prevent soil erosion. The Persian oak defines this landscape, shaping village economies, water systems and grazing patterns. But the Zagros oak belt has been shrinking for decades under pressure from illegal logging, overgrazing, drought, climate change and poor management. Each summer, fire turns that decline into an emergency. That pattern was visible again in Khayiz, where a blaze that began on Badil Mountain burned for days through protected forests near Behbahan, exposing shortages of aerial firefighting capacity.
Experts say the fires have become larger, harder to contain and more closely tied to climate stress, fuel buildup and weak management. Winter and spring rains can cover the slopes with grasses and seasonal plants. By early summer, heat dries that vegetation into fuel load: the combustible layer that lets a spark, a cigarette butt, a campfire or an intentional blaze spread quickl One part of the debate concerns grazing. In the past, livestock consumed part of the seasonal vegetation that now dries out in the mountains. From around 2021, authorities pursued efforts to reduce grazing pressure more seriously to help forests and pastures recover from overuse. (Ed note: It is very important to note that the city of Behbahan in the Khuzestan province of Iran has a population of nearly 160,000 people. Behbahan is deeply connected to the ancient area of Elam. The region is historically intertwined with the ancient Elamite city of Arrajan.) (Read More)
