War and economic crisis complicate efforts to protect Iran’s rich but endangered wildlife

AMIR-HUSSEIN RADJY
Updated Mon, July 13, 2026 

This photo provided by AvayeBoom shows members of the organization interviewing residents to select a flagship species that symbolizes the local community in the Dasht-e Arjan plain, Fars province, Iran, in September 2022. (Mahsa Hashemi/AvayeBoom via AP)(AvayeBoom via AP)

This photo provided by AvayeBoom shows members of the organization conducting a waterbird and shorebird census in wetlands near the Caspian Sea in Mazandaran province, Iran, in January 2026. (AvayeBoom via AP)(AvayeBoom via AP)


This photo provided by AvayeBoom shows a female ruddy shelduck swimming in the wetlands of the Dasht-e Arjan plain, Fars province, Iran, in 2022. (Mohsen Shokrollahi/AvayeBoom via AP)(AvayeBoom via AP)


CAIRO (AP) — A few days after the U.S. and Israel launched a war on Iran, Reza Kiamarzi decided to trek into the mountains outside his home city of Isfahan in southern Iran. A veterinarian and researcher on birds of prey, his mission was to find nests of endangered falcons high up in the cliffs.

The bombardment during the war on Iran earlier this year coincided with the breeding season for Iran's cherished Saker and red-naped Shaheen falcons, some of the fastest flying birds in the world. He knew of two nests near military bases that had been struck, and he wanted to know if the explosions, vibrations and noise affected birds laying eggs or raising chicks.

"It's a long climb to the foot of the cliffs. And then we have to rock climb to reach the nests," Kiamarzi said.

War and a deepening economic crisis are adding further challenges for conservationists trying to preserve Iran's rich but endangered wildlife. For years, they have struggled with climate crises that threaten the country's fragile biodiversity, as well as economic pressures from decades of international sanctions.

Around two and a half times the size of Texas, Iran boasts an astounding diversity of life in its wide range of climates. Northern areas along the Caspian Sea are heavily forested and wet, while the Persian Gulf coast is dry and hot. In between, the country straddles two large mountain ranges: the Zagros and Alborz. Iran lies in a critical corridor and stopover for migratory birds between Eurasia and Africa, lending conservation efforts international importance.

At least 86 animal species in the country are at risk of extinction, including the Asiatic cheetah, Persian fallow deer, brown bear, leopard, black bear, Persian onager, the great bustard and various birds of prey, according to a 2024 report by Iran's Environment Department.

"It's a big question how much longer we and other conservation NGOs can keep working. We're waiting every moment to see what happens," said Iman Ebrahimi, founder of AvayeBoom, a conservation group based in Isfahan whose name is Persian for "The Earth's Cry."

The war gave a shock to Iran's animal life

Kiamarzi, the veterinarian, said he succeeded in finding the falcon's nests, and the birds were still present. But he is still assessing his findings to determine the impact of the bombing on the falcons.

Smugglers have been the chief cause of declining falcon populations in Iran. Before the war, Iran's crashing currency — which has lost over half its value in the past year — spurred an illicit trade in these prized hunting birds, which are sold to Arab Gulf clients paying in valuable foreign currency, he said.

Ironically, in peacetime, military zones have been one of the few areas where falcons can breed safely. "It's a secure area no one dares get close to, not poachers and smugglers," he said.

U.S.-based Iranian wildlife expert Jamshid Parchizadeh says he fears U.S. and Israeli airstrikes targeting military facilities in desert and mountain sites have harmed habitats critical to endangered cheetahs and other predators.

"These strikes in far-flung places are causing habitat degradation. Definitely this causes water and land pollution, soil contamination, destruction of land cover," he said.

Parchizadeh, an expert on Iran's large carnivores, studied the habitats and causes behind declining populations of Asiatic cheetahs, Persian leopards and the brown bear before leaving Iran in 2022. He now works at Michigan's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

"Bombing causes wildlife disturbance for the bears, the leopards who live in the mountains – and that animal forever leaves that area from fear," he said.
Even before the war, habitats were threatened

Iran's water-scarce climate is highly fragile, Parchizadeh said. In the past 20 years, Iran's population has grown from roughly 73 million to over 93 million people, piling further pressure on scant water sources afflicted by decades of mismanagement and yearslong drought.

With the war, access to key wildlife sites on islands in the Persian Gulf has become all but impossible. Despite a preliminary deal to end the war, the U.S. and Iran have continued to trade fire around the strategic area, which hosts Iran's critical oil and energy industries.

"Unfortunately, two of the most important islands of the Persian Gulf for biodiversity are small islands along Iran's key oil islands," said AvayeBoom's Ebrahimi.

He pointed out there were reports an oil slick reached at least one site on the tiny uninhabited island of Shidvar, a critical breeding site for turtles and tens of thousands of birds.

Iran has an active conservation movement

Historically, Iran's culture had a deep connection with its wildlife. Carpet-weaving and traditional arts often featured animal motifs like the Persian lion, which has not been seen in the country in over 70 years.

Iran was one of the first countries in the world to form an environmental protection agency and established its Environment Department a year after the U.S. opened its own agency in 1970. But restrictions on development in protected areas — which are typically in poorer, rural areas — have often spurred tensions with locals.

The Arjan protected area, a vast territory encompassing important wetlands in the southern province of Fars, was set aside in the 1970s for a project to reintroduce the Persian lion into the wild. But authorities abandoned the project after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Residents of the village of Dasht-e Arjan complained that protection status was hampering the local economy, Ebrahimi said.

They are trying to rebuild the public's links to wildlife

Four years ago, AvayeBoom began a campaign to raise wildlife awareness among residents around Arjan, holding workshops and other activities with the community. For the face of the campaign, it chose the ruddy shelduck, a water fowl with vivid orange plumage that's well known among residents. A mural of the bird was painted in the street of a main town.

After the ceasefire in April, members of AvayeBoom returned to the village. They concluded that the campaign, including workshops and a street mural of the shelduck, had greatly increased recognition of the distinct bird and improved general environmental awareness.

"Despite the war, the majority of people considered the environment, the nearby wetlands they have and the wildlife there very important to them," said Fateme Kazemi, the CEO of AvayeBoom.
But security and the economy are weighing on them

Waves of anti-government protests in recent years and now the war have also led to tighter security restrictions. A wildlife photographer who studies birdlife on the Persian Gulf coast said she had stopped photographing out of security concerns in recent months.

"One of the real dangers for protecting the environment is people losing their connection with nature," she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of security fears. She said she plans to return to photographing soon, if the peace deal with the U.S. holds.

AvayeBoom, founded more than a decade ago in Isfahan, has carried out projects ranging across Iran's mountains, forests, deserts and vast wetlands.

But it relies on local funders who are being squeezed by Iran's currency crisis. Sanctions effectively bar Iranian NGOs from taking funding from international donors, Ebrahimi said.

"The first thing we are worried about is that the economic situation will make protecting the environment not a priority," he said.

But despite sanctions, security restrictions and war, he said, "our doors haven't closed and we've continued with our work."

Cheetah chases inspired researchers to make a biologically accurate video game

Society for Experimental Biology

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The species selection screen from Run FoVE Your Life.

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Credit: Baptiste Morel

Movement data from wild predator-prey encounters and controlled human catch-tag games have been combined to create realistic simulations of high-intensity movement dynamics and energetics – before transforming them into a publicly accessible video game. This game utilises a citizen science approach to data collection and is helping to further our understanding of the role of movement decision-making and fatigue in life-or-death encounters.

Intense physical exertion during predator-prey chases can trigger fatigue in both participants, which is defined as the reduction of muscle and movement capacity when operating above a critical threshold. The ability of an animal to capture or elude its opponent is often determined by its capacity for speed and agility before becoming fatigued.

This project, presented at the Society for Experimental Biology conference in Florence, Italy, highlights how real movement data have been captured and transformed into simulated models that allow for human decision-making, so the team can now create more accurate simulations of predator-prey interactions.

Dr Baptiste Morel, an associate professor at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc, France, leads the Force-Velocity-Endurance (FoVE) team that are interested in evaluating the physical abilities of athletes across various sports.

The inspiration for this project came from a collaboration between the FoVE team, who primarily work with human movement, and an ecology lab, who focus on animal movement. “We started to apply the methods that we developed for sports science to the animals in the wild, so we can have an estimation of their physical ability and how much of this ability they will use,” says Dr Morel.

However, high-quality movement data from wild predator-prey chases, comparable to the high-resolution GPS tracking used in professional sports, is limited and practically impossible to produce in controlled conditions. “It’s interesting data because it comes from real life, but it's not possible to control these experiments and understand how their physical ability will lead to fatigue or how the prey might escape or not,” says Dr Morel.

To overcome this data limitation, Dr Morel and his team used human athletes taking part in chase-tag games as models to compare against the wild predator-prey encounters. 

“Chase-tag games are not as intense as true predator-prey encounters, as lives are not typically at risk. However, the roles of predator and prey are so deeply ingrained in animal nature that even without real danger, the game still triggers a high level of physical exertion and intense anxiety,” says Dr Morel.

Movement characteristics were captured from 16 human athletes taking part in “chase tag” interactions, including force, velocity and endurance. These pursuit scenarios simulated iconic predator-prey encounters, and the participants’ movements were tracked by high-frequency GPS and accelerometery.

The team investigated fatigue using two methods. Firstly, by having the humans perform a sprint before and after the chase and comparing the reduction in physical capacity to move. Secondly, by taking blood samples to measure the levels of lactic acid, a marker of muscular chemical disruptions that contributes to fatigue.

Control over the chase-tag scenarios enabled the team to capture a wide range of behavioural data. “For example, we ran experiments with ambush predation over really short distances, and others with long-distance tracking,” says Dr Morel.

Over the last year, Dr Morel and his team have used their findings to develop an innovative online game that simulates the real-world predator-prey encounters with a variety of animals, including wolf, deer and humans. Since virtual simulation now makes anything possible, players can even step into the shoes of extinct species like the Tyrannosaurus rex.

Players take the roles of predator and prey species and chase each other across a digital landscape until either the prey is caught or they survive long enough to escape. Real movement and fatigue calculations have been used to improve the realism of the game.

“We thought that this could not only be a really interesting to share our science, but it could also be a participatory way of doing science,” says Dr Morel, who is very interested in assessing how representative the digital game will be compared to the real human data they have collected.

“For example, we have wolf and African wild dog data where they can hunt persistently for several tens of minutes over kilometres of a chase” says Dr Morel. “But the average chase length for a cheetah is just 200 meters because after they ambush, they start to fatigue and usually will not catch an antelope after that.”

The game ‘Run FoVE your life’ will be soon available for people to play online. Anyone with a computer and an opponent will be able to play.

 

"Predators win" screen from Run FoVE Your Life.

Credit

Baptiste Morel

  

Robots that can see around corners using radio signals and AI

Penn researchers developed HoloRadar, a system that reconstructs hidden 3D spaces beyond robots’ line of sight.

University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science

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HoloRadar uses radio waves to see around corners, allowing it to detect people at T-shaped intersections like the one pictured here. 

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Credit: Sylvia Zhang, Penn Engineering

Penn Engineers have developed a system that lets robots see around corners using radio waves processed by AI, a capability that could improve the safety and performance of driverless cars as well as robots operating in cluttered indoor settings like warehouses and factories. 

The system, called HoloRadar, enables robots to reconstruct three-dimensional scenes outside their direct line of sight, such as pedestrians rounding a corner. Unlike previous approaches to non-line-of-sight (NLOS) perception that rely on visible light, HoloRadar works reliably in darkness and under variable lighting conditions.

“Robots and autonomous vehicles need to see beyond what’s directly in front of them,” says Mingmin Zhao, Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Science (CIS) and senior author of a paper describing HoloRadar, presented at the 39th annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). “This capability is essential to help robots and autonomous vehicles make safer decisions in real time.” 

Turning Walls Into Mirrors

At the heart of HoloRadar is a counterintuitive insight into radio waves. Compared to visible light, radio signals have much longer wavelengths, a property traditionally seen as a disadvantage for imaging because it limits resolution. Zhao’s team realized that, for peering around corners, those longer wavelengths are actually an advantage.

“Because radio waves are so much larger than the tiny surface variations in walls,” says Haowen Lai, a doctoral student in CIS and co-author of the new paper, “those surfaces effectively become mirrors that reflect radio signals in predictable ways.”

In practical terms, this means that flat surfaces like walls, floors and ceilings can bounce radio signals around corners, carrying information about hidden spaces back to a robot. HoloRadar captures these reflections and reconstructs what lies beyond direct view.

“It’s similar to how human drivers sometimes rely on mirrors stationed at blind intersections,” says Lai. “Because HoloRadar uses radio waves, the environment itself becomes full of mirrors, without actually having to change the environment.”

Designed for In-the-Wild Operations

In recent years, other researchers have demonstrated systems with similar capabilities, typically by using visible light. Those systems analyze shadows or indirect reflections, making them highly dependent on lighting conditions. Other attempts to use radio signals have relied on slow and bulky scanning equipment, limiting real-world applications. 

“HoloRadar is designed to work in the kinds of environments robots actually operate in,” says Zhao. “This system is mobile, runs in real time and doesn’t depend on controlled lighting.”

HoloRadar augments the safety of autonomous robots by complementing existing sensors rather than replacing them. While autonomous vehicles already use LiDAR, a sensing system that uses lasers to detect objects in the vehicles’ direct line of sight, HoloRadar adds an additional layer of perception by revealing what those sensors cannot see, giving machines more time to react to potential hazards.

Processing Radio With AI

A single radio pulse can bounce multiple times before returning to the sensor, creating a tangled set of reflections that are difficult to untangle using traditional signal-processing methods alone. 

To solve this problem, the team developed a custom AI system that combines machine learning with physics-based modeling. In the first stage, the system enhances the resolution of raw radio signals and identifies multiple “returns” corresponding to different reflection paths. In the second stage, the system uses a physics-guided model to trace those reflections backward, undoing the mirror-like effects of the environment and reconstructing the actual 3D scene.

“In some sense, the challenge is similar to walking into a room full of mirrors,” says Zitong Lan, a doctoral student in Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE) and co-author of the paper. “You see many copies of the same object reflected in different places, and the hard part is figuring out where things really are. Our system learns how to reverse that process in a physics-grounded way.”

By explicitly modeling how radio waves bounce off surfaces, the AI can distinguish between direct and indirect reflections and determine the correct physical locations of a variety of objects, including people. 

From the Lab to the Real World

The researchers tested HoloRadar on a mobile robot in real indoor environments, including hallways and building corners. In these settings, the system successfully reconstructed walls, corridors and hidden human subjects located outside the robot’s line of sight.

Future work will explore outdoor scenarios, such as intersections and urban streets, where longer distances and more dynamic conditions introduce additional challenges.

“This is an important step toward giving robots a more complete understanding of their surroundings,” says Zhao. “Our long-term goal is to enable machines to operate safely and intelligently in the dynamic and complex environments humans navigate every day.”

This research was conducted in the Wireless, Audio, Vision and Electronics for Sensing (WAVES) Lab at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science, and was supported by the University of Pennsylvania.

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Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Non-Line-of-Sight 3D Reconstruction with Radar

How HoloRadar Works [VIDEO] |

HoloRadar relies on compact and nimble scanning equipment, opening up real-world applications.

Credit

Sylvia Zhang, Penn Engineering

HoloRadar works by reconstructing 3D scenarios from the bounces of radio waves.

Credit

WAVES Lab, Penn Engineering

Open-source modular robot for understanding evolution

A cost-effective, customizable quadruped could help researchers discover the particular advantages related to the length and segmentation of animal limbs

University of Michigan

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Photos of the robot

 

What is it about a cheetah's build that enables it to run so fast? What gives the wolf its exceptional endurance? 

 

While these questions can be partly answered through animal experiments, many contributing factors can't be isolated from one another. Now, a new tool has arrived: a highly customizable, open-source robot design called The Robot of Theseus, or TROT, developed at the University of Michigan.

 

Named in homage to Greek philosophy's "Ship of Theseus," the robot is composed of commercially available motors and 3D-printed parts, which can be rearranged to take on a broad array of designs. The plans address several pain points for animal researchers who might be able to harness robotics for biomechanical experiments, as well as for roboticists seeking more task-specific designs. Assuming access to 3D printers, the cost in parts and materials is under $4,000.

 

"In paleontology, we can go back and look at bones, but it's really difficult to understand how these changes in limb proportion, or in range of motion, may have affected the way an animal can move. There have been some really great insights on this question from robots that each mimic one extinct animal very precisely," said Talia Moore, assistant professor of robotics with a background in evolutionary biology and corresponding author of the study in Bionspiration and Biomimetics. "But each robot took years to design and construct.

 

"I wanted to make a robot that could easily shapeshift into several different extinct species proportions, so that we could compare them, and see how the evolution of those limb lengths and other features would affect their locomotion. With TROT, 60 million years of evolutionary changes in body size can happen in 20 minutes."

 

Usable, customizable and easy to measure

 

The modular robot plans and assembly guides offer three major benefits. First, they are usable by people without robotics degrees, with help from equipment that is available at many universities. As Moore pointed out, robotics offers insights into biological questions, but not many evolutionary labs have the benefit of robotics expertise.

 

Second, the robot's shape is highly customizable. While the published study focuses on four-legged designs, experimenters can change nearly any body segment—adding and removing parts, changing the range of motion and more. This means TROT can model most mammals and enable direct comparisons of variations on the same structure—for instance, between closely related extant and extinct species. And they can try out theoretical designs to determine whether they are biomechanically unfavorable or just untried by evolution.

 

Third, researchers mimicked the springiness and stiffness of muscular structures without actual springs or elastics, which can muddy measurements. TROT simulates this biological energy storage and return mechanism with backdrivable motors, which recover energy as they are driven backwards.

 

"Traditional robots are designed with an emphasis on industrial applications and are expensive to make. TROT was designed with ease of fabrication in mind," said Karthik Urs, a recent master's graduate in robotics and first author of the study.

 

"The overall part count is kept low, and most of the parts only fit together one way. That means that scientists can make most of the robot parts in-house with commodity 3D printers, assemble them and get to experimenting faster. It also makes the iteration process quick—key to enabling exploration in both robot and experimental design."

 

Isolating biomechanical factors that are tough to measure in animals

 

Moore was first inspired to make this robot when reading a 1974 experiment on running cheetahs and goats. Because the leg swings from the hip like a pendulum, physics holds that legs with more mass away from the hip, known as a greater moment of inertia, require more energy to redirect than legs that weigh the same but have most of the mass near the hip. This concept has informed the interpretation of evolutionary changes in legs—increasingly tapered limbs are likely associated with more efficient running.

 

However, the 1974 experiment showed that although a cheetah has a more favorable moment of inertia in its limbs, running costs nearly the same amount of energy as it does for a goat. Because so much else was different between these animals, Moore explained, the benefit from a lower moment of inertia was basically unmeasurable. In contrast, Moore's group varied only the weight distribution in their robot's limbs and was able to isolate the exact amount of energetic cost or benefit associated with that change. 

 

TROT is designed for research and teaching rather than for operational robot work—while some 3D-printed parts break easily, they are also easy to repair and replace. Still, the results of future studies with this robot could inform commercial designs. At present, most commercial quadrupeds have fore and hind legs of the same length and style, but this test robot could reveal how to optimize the legs for the robot's intended purposes and terrains, and quantify whether the gains are worth the increase in manufacturing costs.

 

Researchers and enthusiasts can download the plans for the robot from U-M. The printing instructions for the parts are largely written for typical resin 3D printers, known as fused deposition modeling printers, with a stereolithography printer needed for a couple of components.

 

Urs is now the lead spacecraft engineer at Argo Space.

 

Study: The Robot of Theseus: A modular robotic testbed for legged locomotion (DOI: 10.1088/1748-3190/ae3ec1)

 

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Journal

Bioinspiration & Biomimetics

DOI

10.1088/1748-3190/ae3ec1