About 7 million people live in the densely populated Hyrcanian region and its favorable climate, timber resources and fertile soils has led to a very fast and still on-going urbanization (Akhani et al., 2010). Annually about 10,000 ha of natural resources are exploited in the region (Jahanifar et al., 2019). This continuous land encroachment leads to habitat loss of natural forests (Zarandian et al., 2015), disturbance of wildlife and weakens the ecological connectivity of the WH property.