Golestan National Park

Golestan National Park lies in the mountains at the eastern end of the Alborz, where Golestan meets North Khorasan and Semnan provinces. It was first protected in 1957 and later declared a national park, the first in Iran, and it remains one of the country's most important reserves for wildlife. Its area is roughly nine hundred square kilometres.

What makes the park remarkable is how much changes within a short distance. Its western and northern slopes catch moisture from the Caspian and are covered with dense deciduous forest of oak, hornbeam, maple and wild fruit trees, part of the ancient Hyrcanian forest belt that once ran along the whole southern shore of the Caspian and that UNESCO inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2019. Travel east and the trees thin into juniper woodland, then open grassland and finally the dry steppe of Khorasan.

This mix of habitats supports a rich fauna. The park is home to the Persian leopard, brown bear, wolf, wild boar, the maral or Caspian red deer, wild goat, and the urial, a wild sheep with great curling horns that grazes the open slopes. More than a hundred species of birds have been recorded. Rangers patrol the park, and its staff have long worked to protect the animals from poaching.

The main road between Gorgan and Mashhad runs straight through the park along the valley floor, so many travellers pass through it without stopping. Those who do stop find picnic grounds and forest trails in the west and wide views of rolling grassland in the east, and in autumn the forest turns red and gold. The road's traffic is also one of the park's main pressures, and conservationists have long called for measures to reduce collisions with wildlife.