Stakeholders' perceptions of factors affecting timber smuggling in the Hyrcanian forest in Iran

The Hyrcanian forest in Northern Iran has faced increased incidents of timber smuggling over the last decade caused by multiple interwoven factors. The study analysed factors affecting timber smuggling in order to identify the most appropriate strategies to combat this problem. The views of a range of stakeholders were sought, including government and local communities. Analysis reveled 16 key classes of factors affecting timber smuggling amongst which, factors within administrative-political, economic-livelihood and law-legal dimensions were shown to be the most effective. Executive weaknesses, supervision weaknesses, and planning weaknesses within the administrative-political dimension, higher demand for timber, market boom and increase in wood prices, and dependency of local communities' livelihood on forests within the economic-livelihood dimension, and legal limitations within the law-legal dimension, were found to be the most important key factors affecting timber smuggling. Forest conservation can mitigate the situation by reducing the negative effects of the identified factors.