"In some rural areas in Kermanshah and Kurdistan Provinces in
western part of Iran, vegetation covers, in and around commentaries,
are left intact. A plant ecology survey was carried out in seventeen
of such sacred groves. Density, cover and dominance for each tree
species was determined and the ecological values were calculated
using Curtis method (1976). Results obtained from this study
indicate that various aspects of vegetation structure such as species
composition, growth form and canopy stratification are under strong
influence of the long term conservation and other factors such as
edge effect and chance extinction relating to grove size. These
results, compared with similar information available on natural oak
forests in the Zagros Region in Kermanshah Province, indicate that
sacred "groves are more abundant, less diverse, have lost some of
their life forms such as bushes and grass communities, have less
complex cover "strata and suffer from an unbalanced and aged age
structure. These study shows that despite people efforts these
natural-cultural heritage have no secure future and may be damaged
by the same factors that destroyed oak forest in Zagros Region. Soil
erosion, trampling, overgrazing and limitations caused by grove size
on plant reproduction are imposing severe barriers to community
regeneration in some of the sacred groves.
)