Girkan

Hirkan National Park lies at the south-eastern tip of Azerbaijan, in the districts of Lankaran and Astara, in the Talysh region and beside the Iranian border, and protects some 40,358 hectares. It was declared a national park in 2004 on the basis of an earlier reserve.

It protects the northern end of the Hyrcanian forests, the belt of humid deciduous forest that extends some nine hundred kilometres along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, between Azerbaijan and Iran. These are forests of Arcto-Tertiary lineage that survived the Quaternary glaciations in this refuge between the mountains and the sea, and they preserve relict genera lost from the rest of Europe and western Asia, among them the Persian ironwood, endemic to the region and with wood so dense that it sinks in water.

The story of its international recognition is a long one. In 2005 Azerbaijan proposed the park for the World Heritage List on its own, but the Committee deferred the nomination and recommended that the country recast it as part of a transnational serial property alongside the Iranian Hyrcanian forests. In 2019 the fifteen Iranian components were inscribed, and in September 2023 the Committee approved the extension with two Azerbaijani components, Dangyaband and İstisuchay, both within this park. The forest is home to Persian leopard, Caucasian lynx and a rich woodland birdlife.