Miankaleh Wildlife Sanctuary and Wetland is located on a small peninsula by the same name in the Gulf of Gorgan at the southeastern end of the Caspian Sea.
Miankaleh Peninsula was known only to locals until it became a tourist destination in the mid-1990s. In the early days, those who took a trip to Gorgan Bay to visit Miankaleh Island would notice that everything was pristine and clean.
Miankaleh features coastal dunes, pomegranate shrubs, birds like herons, whooper swans, and pelicans, and mammals like the Caspian seal. Visiting Miankaleh feels like entering a fictional realm.
This realm has changed, however, and the clock is ticking for this small paradise. Tourists, hunters, arsonists, builders, and Islamic Republic officials have all discovered and laid claim to this beautiful island.
Even Ibrahim Raisi, the eighth president of the Islamic Republic, has now traveled to Miankaleh.
Ibrahim Raisi and Miankaleh
In March, seven months into his presidency, Ibrahim Raisi traveled to the two northern provinces of Golestan and Mazandaran. From each of these provinces, he took a boat trip to the Miankaleh Peninsula.
During one of his visits to Miankaleh, Raisi called to establish nature tourism in the region, taking environmental considerations into account. He said that creating nature tourism in the Miankaleh area could create jobs for locals and attract tourism revenue.
While the president visited the Miankaleh Wildlife Sanctuary and Wetland, a separate, contradictory event took place: Raisi’s interior minister attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a petrochemical complex in a village near Miankaleh.
The construction of this complex and the plan to expand tourism in Miankaleh were both met with steadfast protests by environmental activists.
Amirabad Petrochemical Plant: Strange pressure from the minister and a member of parliament (MP)
On March 11, the interior minister inaugurated Mazandaran Petrochemical Complex, or Amirabad Petrochemical Plant, in the Hosseinabad village of Behshahr city.
While the private sector has invested 80 trillion tomans in this project, environmental activists in Iran insist that the minister and an MP are pushing forward this project in a peculiar way.
Gholamreza Shariati, a parliamentary representative for Mazandaran, claims that this petrochemical plant will create 75,000 jobs. However, each petrochemical plant employs an average of 200 to 400 workers, and so it is unclear how the MP arrived at this number.
This claim of creating so many new jobs is seemingly an attractive promise, especially in the east of Mazandaran, which has about 60,000 unemployed people. At the very least, it could help Mr. Shariati get reelected by his constituency.
The problem with the Amirabad Petrochemical Plant is not whether or not it will solve the unemployment problem in the province. Rather, the issue is that the plant is located on the boundary of the Miankaleh International Wetland and Iranian environmentalists consider the petrochemical plant to be a threat to the wetland and its unique biodiversity.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi stated that the environmental safeguards of the project are under observation and that an environmental permit has been obtained for the plant.
The minister’s remarks are as dubious as those of the MP, however. No one has ever seen this permit or any environmental assessment on this project.
According to a meeting of head of the Department of Environment, Ali Salajegheh with a group of environmental activists, this petrochemical project has no environmental permit and is therefore not valid.
Perhaps the strangest thing to occur is the presence of the head of the environmental organization in the groundbreaking ceremony.
The protests by environmental experts and media reports criticizing the petrochemical project near Miankaleh all highlight the strange insistence of the Minister of the Interior Ahmad Vahidi and Mazandaran MP Gholamreza Shariati, both of whom have previously served in the IRGC and the Basij.
Mohammad Darvish, an environmental expert in Iran, told ISNA, “They claim that the petrochemical plant will supposedly be 5 kilometers away from Miankaleh, but, when we look at maps of this area, we realize that the Amirabad Special Economic Zone is only 60 meters away from the boundary of Miankaleh Wildlife Sanctuary and Wetland.”
Ismail Kahrom, another prominent environmental activist, told the newspaper Arman Melli,
“Without a permit from the Department of the Environment, it would in theory be impossible to build this petrochemical site near Miankaleh. But in my opinion, considering that an MP and the interior minister are behind this affair, this petrochemical plant will be built and will destroy Miankaleh.”
In this interview, Kahrom discussed the role of local officials, saying, “There is an official in Miankaleh who, along with his children and relatives, wants to destroy Miankaleh and create a tourist site in the region.”
Since Kahrom and other environmentalists are not pointing out a specific person, it’s difficult to uncover more information.
However, considering the military background of the MP and the interior minister, who both seem to push for this project, the construction of a petrochemical complex in northern Iran may have strategic reasons. For example, the Islamic Republic might want a petrochemical complex situated far from land borders in order to stay safe in the event of war.
The popular month for hunters: February and other months
In February of this year, Hossein-Ali Ebrahimi, director general of environmental protection in Mazandaran province, reported that poachers flooded to the area for about ten days.
According to Ebrahimi, groups of 50 to 100 poachers descended upon the island with boats and hunting equipment, including guns, and the island’s guards came under fire from hunters.
Finally, after ten days, law enforcement intervened. Four people were arrested, and officials confiscated much of their equipment, tools, and boats.
The hunters’ attack on the rangers of Miankaleh and Ashuradeh is not a new phenomenon. In February 2020, hunters injured four rangers.
Rare and endangered species and migratory waterfowl live in this area.
According to the CITES list of endangered birds, the Environmental Protection Agency of Iran has designated Miankaleh as a habitat of dozens of endangered birds.
Miankaleh Lagoon is one of 12 biosphere reserves on the planet. It is a paradise for bird watchers; rare birds in this lagoon include egretta, herons, collared pratincole, whooper swan, dalmatian pelican, flamingo, white-headed duck, red-breasted goose, bean goose, western swamphen, coots, and smew.
Suspicious death of birds in Miankaleh
In recent years, birds have been dying mysteriously in Miankaleh. In January 2020, the media reported the mysterious death of over 40,000 migratory birds in the Miankaleh Peninsula.
A veterinary organization announced that “botulinum poisoning” was the reason behind mass bird mortality, but not all experts and environmental activists were satisfied by this explanation.
Ismail Kahrom had raised the possibility of the deliberate killing of birds by hunters or landowners.
Environmental activists have previously reported that fishermen inject birds with a small amount of venom to make it difficult for them to fly. The UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species had previously warned Iran against the excessive hunting of birds.
Wildfires and other disasters
There seems to be no end to Miankaleh’s misery, as wildfire is also becoming a frequent problem there.
According to official reports, more than 1,000 hectares of vegetation and forest in the Miankaleh Protected Area have been destroyed by fire in recent years.
Locals say poachers and other violators are setting fire to Miankaleh in retaliation. Some environmental activists are also skeptical that those who want to lay claim to the land are setting fire to the area.
This article has not provided an exhaustive list of all of the disasters harming Miankaleh. In addition to those mentioned, there is also the unregulated construction of coastal structures in upper Gorgan Bay, the encroachment of government institutions, the industrial pollution by factories, and finally, drought and climate change.
Miankaleh: A protected area
Miankaleh Peninsula and Wetland became a protected area in 1969, meaning that this area has technically been protected for more than half a century. Miankaleh was also designated a Ramsar site in 1975. A Ramsar site, which is a UNESCO designation for a wetland site deemed to be of international importance
The entire Miankaleh Wildlife Sanctuary was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1976. Yet, a critical wetland that has been protected for more than half a century is in such a dire state today. One could ask: What would Miankaleh be like if it were not included on the list of protected areas?