Face to face education to the visitors, May 2016.

In order to get local people participation and collaboration, which is our main goal, resolving wildlife interactions that threaten human property would be so important. Hence, one of the first steps would be to balance and resolve wildlife damages for local communities. Only afterwards we can focus on species different interests for the people and main values of wildlife for local communities such as ecotourism and also their role in life cycle in the area. Resolving conflicts would inspire the sense of cooperation of the local people with the project team and reliance on the project and this would be a successful starting point to involve them in conservation activities. Practical methods of removing conflicts sustainably can persuade local people to use similar methods and the condition of local people and wildlife would be balanced by controlling wildlife damages.

We will emphasize on raising local people awareness through educational programs about threatened species of the area, their role in life cycle and ecological and financial benefits of biodiversity. Using different methods to raise environmental awareness of both local people and tourists visiting the area would complete this activity.

We train local people to work in-group. We would have educational sessions or workshops for the local team members regarding environmental issues. This activity can result to a team of local people in which they participate in the project time and when project team leaves the area. Community based organization (CBO) would be a sustainable achievement for long-term conservation. Parvar Protected Area (PPA) can be introduced, as one of the pilot protected areas in which community based conservation will be implemented. This would be a sustainable conservation due to participation of local people. We would also exchange our experiences with other wildlife conservationists. We will focus on conservation of large carnivores (Leopard & Bear). Conservation of Leopard in PPA as the most charismatic carnivore, one of the main sources of Leopard population in Iran and endangered umbrella specie can lead to conservation of other species. Raising local people awareness specially children regarding biodiversity of the area can result to culture building about environmental issues and have a significant and long lasting impact on conservation. Population estimation and genetic diversity of the species on the top of the food pyramid is one of the vital factors for management strategies. One of the prospects of the project that can occur in the future would be population estimation of leopard and genetic diversity of Persian Leopard and brown bear in the area.