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November 11, 2003
The Godfather
He came to the top of the steps, a small man dressed nattily in a suit and tie, something rarely seen in Iran, where ties were banned by the revolutionary guards. "Salaam," I said. "Welcome," he answered.
Eskandar Firouz is the father of Iran's environmental movement, the man who started Iran's Game and Fish Department and its Department of Environment, which he ran. In his heyday, he was visited by Dillon Ripley, the head of the Smithsonian. His presence was requested by the American government at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Yellowstone. He oversaw the signing of the Ramsar wetlands convention treaty in 1971. He was in line to take over as the president of the International Conservation Union.
A member of one of Iran's 10 most important families, his connections, together with his willpower, created the first system of environmental protection for Iran. But those same connections led him by 1980 to be locked up in the notorious Evin prison for 6 years. Originally, he was to be killed.
I had heard about Mr. Firouz's books from a friend in Boise who is a hunter. He tracked down his phone number in Iran, but when I called Mr. Firouz he was very curt with me. I later learned that his phone is tapped. So when I came here, I used some intermediaries to arrange an appointment. He cancelled the first appointment, and rescheduled for a time that was not very convenient for me, as I was up north. But I wasn't going to miss the chance, so I hurried back.
As I expected, because of his past experiences, Mr. Firouz did not want me to record his interview, either on video or audio tape. this was a disappointment for me, but this is a different world, and one has to respect the wishes of someone who has been in such danger.
In his cozy apartment, surrounded by books by Shakespeare, Faulkner, and Gore Vidal, this 1948 Yale graduate talked with me for over an hour, about his accomplishments and his regrets. "Everything has been lost," he says of Iran's environmental movement. "Even though a conservation ethic had been generated, when the revolution came they thought of all of us as the work of Satan."
The current leaders, he says, "have no education. They are against talent people. Truly qualified people they think are against them."
As a result, he says, "the backbone of the best (Iranian) managerial talent is on 4 different continents," mostly North America.
Firouz, who has a home near the Caspian Sea, says he despairs when he sees the flooding there caused by rapid deforestation, and the tons of trash littering the beach. "I don't sleep at night I'm so outraged by the whole thing," he says.
After leaving prison, he sought refuge for ten years by writing the most extensive work on Iran's flora and fauna, a book that won the Iranian Publisher's Association top award. But the work, he said, was also "self defense," to help reclaim his professional stature.
His reputation, though, is hardly dead among young conservationists. Two of them, environmental reporters, came along with me to meet him. To them he is a god, someone who stood up for nature against politics. One of them was in tears as we left. In broken English she told me "I am so angry that he has to be inside while stupid people are ruining our country."
For Mr. Firouz, these young people, some of whom call him from remote areas on their cell phones to tell them about wildlife sightings, are his strength. "The solace to me really is the way young people are beginning to approach these questions," he says.
But in the end, he says, most of the environmental damage here is "irreversible," the result both of rapid population growth and a mindset that does not consider environmental protection to be good economic policy. No repairs, he says, will be possible at all until the current regime goes. "The only way is to change the administration--totally," he says.
Posted by MJF at November 11, 2003 03:10 PM
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:) p
Posted by: Peter M. at November 12, 2003 10:30 PM