Social dynamics of values, taboos and perceived threats around sacred groves in Kurdistan, Iran

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2020 The Authors. People and Nature published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society 1Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences, University of Kassel, Witzenhausen, Germany 2Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-AugustUniversität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany 3Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran 4Centre for Research and Development of Northern Zagros Forestry, Baneh, Iran


| INTRODUC TI ON
Protected areas are the most common global strategy for conserving biodiversity in the face of ecosystem loss, fragmentation, and degradation (Watson et al., 2014). The establishment of protected areas is a proven method for delivering important ecosystem services on which the welfare of current and future generations depends (Castro et al., 2015;Palomo et al., 2011). Protected areas now cover 15% of the global land area (Visconti et al., 2019), and proposals have been made to increase coverage up to 30% (plus additional climate stabilisation areas) by 2030 (Dinerstein et al., 2019). Despite the successes of expanding protected area networks, however, the diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems continues to decline faster than at any time in human history in most taxonomic groups (Brondizio et al., 2019). These declines have been found not only outside, but also inside protected areas (for instance, in flying insects in Germany, Hallmann et al., 2017). Decreases appear to be more moderate within protected areas (e.g. those of global insect abundances, van Klink et al., 2020). In general, the world's protected areas only partly cover areas of importance for biodiversity and are not yet fully ecologically representative and well-connected .
The most significant limitations of the formal protected areas approach are in the social realm. Across the world, protected areas are challenged by resource use conflicts with local people and a general difficulty in balancing conservation with economic and social goals (Blicharska et al., 2016;West et al., 2006). Such conflicts are affected by legal, financial, procedural, scientific, social and political drivers.
Negative attitudes of local stakeholders toward protected areas, low degrees of stakeholder involvement in protected area management, lack of political support from local and national governments and understaffing of management authorities are common (Kati et al., 2015).
Many of these problems are unsurprising, given that top-down protected area strategies have displaced people across the world from their traditional lands, and/or restricted their access to ecosystem services (Palomo et al., 2014). 'People and nature' models have been proposed as frameworks for protected areas to overcome these challenges. Current conservation thinking focuses on linking nature to human well-being, identifying nature's benefits as needed and received by people and envisaging a multi-layered and multidimensional relationship between people and protected areas (Armitage et al., 2020;Mace, 2014).
Sacred groves are a time-tested 'people and nature' approach to conservation, and thus an important complement to formal protected areas (Lowman & Sinu, 2017). Here, we define sacred groves as forests and woodlands that are of particular spiritual significance for people and communities (Pungetti et al., 2012). Sacred groves have persisted in many countries throughout the world and include a wide variety of habitats (Bhagwat & Rutte, 2006). They form a largely unrecognised 'shadow network' of conservation areas exempt from agriculture, forestry and other land uses. Sacred natural sites, including sacred groves, play a role in Bon, Buddhist, Daoist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, Shinto and many other faiths (Dudley et al., 2009). They have been most commonly studied in India, where there are 100,000-150,000 sacred groves (Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010). Other hotspots are China (Gao et al., 2013) as well as Western (Barre et al., 2009), Northern (Deil et al., 2005 and Eastern Africa (Doffana, 2017).
Several characteristics make sacred groves relevant for consideration in protected area strategies. First, local people show great willingness to protect and conserve sacred groves. Their local ecological practices, social values and taboos offer powerful protection (Negi, 2010;Xu et al., 2005), as for instance expressed in reduced forest cover losses (Byers et al., 2001). Secondly, sacred groves are small in extent, but disproportionally rich in biodiversity and ecosystem services, especially when forming a network of habitats (Ray & Ramachandra, 2010). Third, sacred groves are often situated in intensively used agricultural or urban landscapes. These are typically locations where formal protected areas are underrepresented and where refuges for endangered species are most needed (Mgumia & Oba, 2003). Fourth, sacred sites have evolved over centuries (Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010), which means that they play an important role in biodiversity conservation by offering habitat continuity (Kowarik et al., 2016). Fifth, sacred sites involve place-specific social memories related to the stewardship of ecosystems and biodiversity. As 'biocultural refugia' they store, revive and transmit memories that may be useful in the future for coping with social and environmental uncertainties (Barthel et al., 2013).
Finally, as multifunctional common-property resources (Rutte, 2011), sacred groves are socially more inclusive than formal protected areas, providing benefits to a broad range of local people (Chandrakanth et al., 2004). Taken together, these characteristics indicate that sacred groves come close to the 'people and nature' ideal of conservation.
The biodiversity conservation potential of many sacred groves is well-established (Bhagwat & Rutte, 2006), and bodies such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UNESCO have included sacred groves in their conservation strategies (Verschuuren et al., 2010). Despite these efforts, however, many of the world's sacred groves are declining in their extent or their ecological qualities are being degraded. The drivers behind this weakening of sacred groves are complex, and include legal (e.g. loss of customary rights in sacred groves), socioeconomic (e.g. increasing population numbers) and cultural aspects (e.g. loss of traditional faiths; Bhagwat & Rutte, 2006;Chandrakanth et al., 2004).
A substantial amount of research has addressed sacred groves in different biomes and linked to different faiths in the world (as reviewed by Bhagwat & Rutte, 2006;. Very little is known, however, about sacred groves in the Middle East, the world region covering Western Asia, Egypt, Iran and Turkey. The study of sacred groves in this world region is particularly important, as the Middle East hosts several global biodiversity hotspots (most notably, the Irano-Antolian biodiversity hotspot, Mittermeier et al., 2011). More than 400 plant species are limited to the Irano-Anatolian hotspot. In addition, more than 360 bird, 140 mammal, 115 reptile, some 20 amphibian and around 90 freshwater fish species (many of these being endemic) have been recorded (Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, 2020). At the same time, the region has a large population and is subject to natural resource pressures, weak governance of formally protected areas and complex demographic, socioeconomic and political dynamics (Ghoddousi et al., 2017;Talebi et al., 2013). Many community-based approaches to nature conservation, such as sacred groves and the 'Hima' system, have traditionally developed in the Middle East, but are currently in decline. The Hima protected area system is an ancient Arabic approach that protects trees, wildlife, grasslands, fields, woodlands and wetlands from indiscriminate harvest on a temporary or permanent basis (Gari, 2006). An erosion of the religious beliefs and cultural traditions that created and maintained both Hima lands and sacred groves is routinely mentioned in the literature (Khan et al., 2008;Serhal et al., 2011). Those values, taboos and perceived threats have, to our knowledge, not been assessed, and are related to sociodemographic changes. Our study aims to identify the most important social values, taboos and perceived threats around sacred groves in the Kurdistan province of Iran, an area close to the Iraqi border. We test whether the values, taboos and perceptions of threats that are important for the maintenance of sacred groves are lost in transmission across generations, with increased urbanisation, and with modern livelihoods. We also assess differences between women and men, and between locals with and without formal education, and analyse the interactions between the expressed values, taboos and perceptions of threat. We discuss the potential and challenges of sacred sites to inform 'people and nature' approaches to conservation.

| Study area
The study area includes sacred groves located close to villages in Baneh County, Iran. This region is embedded in the Zagros mountains that range from the Mediterranean Sea in eastern Turkey to the Persian Gulf in southern Iran, and are considered homeland of the Kurdish people. The main vegetation type is oak woodland, comprising Quercus brantii, Quercusin infectoria and Quercus libani (Talebi et al., 2013). The main companion woody species include Pistacia atlantica, Crataegus sp., Cerasus sp., Amygdalus sp. and Astragalus sp. Baneh County has some of the richest flora in Western Iran, comprising around 1,000 plant species. About 250 plant species have been recorded in the sacred groves  Table S1). In recent years, the low profitability of traditional land-use practices has resulted in a shift of livelihoods toward gardening, Kolbari and out-migration to urban areas.
F I G U R E 1 Map of the Baneh study area. Triangles show the sacred groves included in this study Each of the villages has 1-3 sacred groves (extent: 0.3-7.0 ha, Figure 2). These comprise patches of old-growth forests or wooded areas ( Figure 3). Sacred groves include cemeteries or individual tombs, and are recognised by the local people as the dwelling places of their ancestors' souls. Most sacred groves are located in plain terrain. Since they are used as burial places, they are all located close to roads. Some sacred groves include a grave belonging to a saint (recognised as 'Shakhs'). Sacred groves including Shakhs possess higher spiritual value for people, and they are therefore typically larger and better preserved. Generally the land of the sacred groves has been endowed to a mosque, and serves as a cemetery for the village. Sacred groves are therefore formally in public ownership. When there was no more space for new tombs, people endowed new land as sacred groves

| Questionnaire design
We developed a paper-based questionnaire to elicit people's values, taboos and perceived threats involving sacred groves. The questionnaire consisted of four parts. Parts I to III comprised lists of statements on values, taboos and perceived threats, to which respondents could agree or disagree. These statements were defined after initial F I G U R E 2 Sacred grove near Hanga Zahl (Photo by Aioub Moradi) deliberation with local people during exploratory visits to the study area. Part I presented a series of nine statements on values attached to sacred groves, including, for example, biodiversity, recreational and cultural heritage values (using the ecosystem services terminology of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003). Part II enquired about taboos that respondents would respect around sacred groves. Among the nine statements were, for instance, 'Hunting must not be practiced in sacred groves' and 'Visitors must not step on graves'. Part III was dedicated to 10 types of perceived threats to sacred groves, and asked, for example, about wildfires, the overaging of trees (a failure of saplings entering mature tree size classes and the gradual mortality of large trees, Montagnini & Ashton, 1999) and the destruction of graves. The responses given in Parts I to III were measured using Likert-type scales, ranging from 1 ('strongly disagree' for Parts I and II, and 'not important at all' for Part III) to 5 ('strongly agree' for Parts I and II, and 'very important' for Part III). Respondents could also note that they did not know an answer (see Table S2 for full statements). Part IV asked about respondent characteristics, such as age, gender, occupation, level of formal education and performing galazani (as a proxy for practicing a traditional lifestyle). Our questionnaire did not include open-ended questions.
Finally, distance to the next large city, Baneh, was calculated for each village. The questionnaire was pretested with colleagues at the University of Kurdistan in Sanandaj, Iran.

| Data collection
The survey population of this study comprised residents from the 25 villages. These villages were selected to represent a gradient from being close to being distant from Baneh city, and to include smaller and larger settlements. A strictly random selection of villages was not possible, as we depended on the permission of village councils to perform interviews and conduct vegetation studies. We aimed for a sample size similar to that used by Allendorf F I G U R E 3 Inside of a sacred grove in Bikash, depicting Quercus infectoria and Quercus brantii trees and a well-developed herbal layer F I G U R E 4 Ophrys reinholdii ssp. straussii is a rare orchid. Its roots are harvested for traditional medicinal uses. The orchid remains relatively common in sacred groves, where it is protected by taboos et al. (2014) and Ormsby (2013), and finally obtained a total of 205 responses (1-15 responses per village, max. 1 respondent per family) through purposive sampling. We selected interviewees so as to cover all age groups, both women and men, and literate and illiterate villagers. Of our final sample, 58% were men and 42% were women. Twenty-three percent of respondents were <30 years, 39% were 30-60 years and 38% were >60 years old (Table 1). Survey participants were invited and interviewed in public places, such as mosques and tea houses. Interviews with women and elderly people were carried out in their homes. The households were all in a similar distance to the groves, because houses are concentrated in the inhabited area of the villages. We performed data collection from April to September 2017. The questionnaires were filled in with the help of local facilitators. Interviews were carried out orally in the Sorani language. Facilitators introduced respondents to the purpose of the survey and the use of the data, and guaranteed that no respondent names were recorded. We did not compensate respondents financially. Our University of Kurdistan research team had been working in this region since 2005, and this longterm relationship created trust with the local people. A systematic self-assessment provided by the University of Kassel ethics board indicated that our survey required an ethically sensitive procedure, but the board granted an exemption from requiring formal ethics approval. Ethical guidelines developed for the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Programme were fully considered, for example by ensuring that no children or other vulnerable populations were interviewed, that participation was voluntary, that respondents were not deceived about the purpose of the study, that data processing was subject to appropriate safeguards and that the data minimisation principle was considered. Our facilitators obtained informed consent before performing the interviews. The survey was delivered orally, and consent was also given verbally. To obtain written informed consent would have been culturally inappropriate, and impossible in practice, as around 41% of the respondents were illiterate (Table 1). The general distrust of local people toward outsiders in the conflict-prone study area also did not allow written information to be collected from the respondents.     destruction of graves and overgrazing were the threats perceived with the highest values (average of 4.6, 4.6 and 4.5). In contrast, excessive visitor numbers and illegal hunting were perceived as less important threats (Figure 5c).

| Social drivers
Several factors significantly affected the expressions of values, taboos and perceived threats ( In the importance of taboos, greater distances to the city were relevant to stronger attitudes against dead wood harvesting, fodder collection and grazing, pollarding and stepping on graves (Table 3).
Respondents living in villages at a medium distance from the city found the taboo against road construction less important. Older respondents held stronger taboos against road construction, the harvesting of living trees and stepping on graves. Women expressed stronger attitudes against pollarding in sacred groves than men, but they expressed fewer attitudes against harvesting living trees. Formal education did not affect the perception of taboos.
Respondents living a traditional lifestyle supported the taboos against road construction, dead wood harvesting and fodder collection more strongly.
In relation to the perception of threats, respondents living farther away from the city showed stronger concerns in relation to wildfires, overgrazing, littering and the destruction of graves than those living close to the city (

| Relationships between values, taboos and perceived threats
The multivariate RDA analysis revealed significant associations between the expressed values, taboos and perceived threats  Table S4).
No taboos or perceived threats were found to be linked to these two values.

| D ISCUSS I ON
This study set out to explore the potential of sacred groves as a 'people and nature' model of conservation in the Middle East.
Formal conservation governance has often failed, and armed conflicts and illicit activities are undermining conservation and sustainable land use in this world region (Baumann & Kuemmerle, 2016;Tellman et al., 2020). Our first finding was that sacred groves remain common features of the landscape, persisting in virtually every village that we visited in Kurdistan. Local people are well aware of these groves and ready to talk about them. None of the groves had been studied before, and we found only one study that included a sacred grove in the whole of Iran (Avatefi Hemmat et al., 2012). In this context, our interest was in how social values (Allendorf et al., 2014), taboos (Barre et al., 2009) and perceptions of threats (Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010) are underpinning sacred grove conservation.
Nearly every respondent identified one or more societal values in sacred groves as being important. Similar to findings among Tibetans in Yunnan, China (Allendorf et al., 2014), the highest ranked values were spiritual ones. Respondents emphasised the sacredness of the groves, their function as burial places and the special meaning of tombs of holy persons. Spirituality thus appears to be a major driver underpinning the social values of sacred groves in Kurdistan.
Evidence from other parts of the world highlights how religions have influenced not only values and meanings, but also peoples' actions, and policy changes toward environmental conservation (Awoyemi et al., 2012;Bhagwat et al., 2011;McLeod & Palmer, 2015). In addition to spiritual values, the importance of the groves for biodiversity, inspiration and cultural heritage values was commonly highlighted.
This finding, similar to perspectives on sacred natural sites by Tibetans (Yaofeng et al., 2009), expresses a biocultural understanding of interlinked intangible natural and cultural heritage values (Hanspach et al. 2020). In contrast, the harvesting of wild plant resources and social relations were considered less important. This seems different from findings from India, where the non-destructive extraction of plant products is a major benefit of sacred groves for local people (Prashanth Ballullaya et al., 2019), and where sacred groves are socially important meeting places (Blicharska et al., 2013).
Recreational values were rated with the lowest importance, as has been found elsewhere (Allendorf et al., 2014). Hiking, running, biking and camping have their primary origin in North America and Europe (Bell et al., 2009), and are not common in this part of the world-and seem to be particularly uncommon in a sacred grove.
Adherence to religious and social taboos and fear of repercussions are prime factors in conserving sacred groves world-wide (Barre et al., 2009;Negi, 2010;Prashanth Ballullaya et al., 2019), most notably by driving the conservation-friendly behaviour of people (e.g. against harming snakes, Landry Yuan et al., 2020). Our survey revealed a large number of important taboos prevalent around the sacred groves of Kurdistan. Agreement about taboos was much higher than about social values and also higher than, for example, found in an Indian study of sacred groves (Ormsby, 2013). Of greatest importance for local people were the taboos against cutting trees, picnicking, stepping on graves, collecting fodder and grazing livestock and constructing roads in sacred groves (cf. Avatefi Hemmat et al., 2012). These taboos may be respected even by people who are not part of traditional belief systems but want to avoid trouble with informal local authorities (Barre et al., 2009). None of the taboos was considered unimportant by our respondents. While the sustainability of taboo practices appears threatened due to Western-style education systems in some parts of the world (e.g. in India, Negi, 2010), taboos seem to have remained intact in Kurdistan, despite the region's economic and social development.
Similar to the taboos, there was a very high level of agreement that the future of sacred groves is threatened (cf. Allendorf et al., 2014). These threats were perceived to come from different directions: the increasing natural resource extraction has been identified as putting pressure on sacred groves elsewhere (Blicharska et al., 2013;Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010) and was expressed as overgrazing and lack of tree regeneration, tree removal, illegal hunting and the destruction of graves in our Kurdish case. Changing cultural traditions (Ormsby, 2013) were also expressed as threats, however, The ways in which local communities interact, use and manage local resources, including sacred groves, often change across generations (Allendorf, 2020). Our results showed that age group is an important variable influencing values, taboos and perceived threats. We found that older people attributed higher importance to biodiversity, inspiration and spiritual values. Older respondents also perceived stronger taboos against road construction, harvesting from living trees and stepping on graves, and a higher threat of overall disrespectful behaviours compared to younger respondents.
Similarly, Campbell (2005) found that elderly people show more respect for sacred groves in Ghana. The loss of the cultural importance of sacred groves among young people is often ascribed to westernised urban cultures (Bhagwat & Rutte, 2006). Interestingly, younger people's knowledge of sacred groves in Yunnan was lower, but the intensity of use and appreciation remained the same across generations (Allendorf et al., 2014). This may call for efforts to strengthen the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge in conservation strategies.
Previous studies have shown how men and women often have different relationships with natural areas due to the gendered divisions of labour, resources and responsibilities (Allendorf & Yang, 2017). The dimension of gender has often remained unconsidered in the literature of social values toward sacred groves, however, and social sampling has underrepresented women or even omitted the gender dimension entirely (e.g. Kandari et al., 2014 (Yang et al., 2018). Women are often more prone to support sustainable management practices that contribute to biodiversity conservation (Yang et al., 2018). A consideration of gender may thus help to understand the complexity of relationships between people and nature, and lead to better conservation practices and policies.
Formal education demonstrated few significant relationships to values, taboos and perceived threats, however, we emphasise that such statistical non-significance does not necessarily mean the absence of an effect. Some herders might turn to sacred groves to mitigate the lack of additional fodder resources, which may lead to overgrazing. Similar associations between loss of traditional ecological knowledge and intensification have been found in other grazing landscapes (e.g. Kizos et al., 2013).

| CON CLUS IONS
Sacred groves are in many ways an illustrative, time-tested and successful model of 'people and nature'-centred conservation. Our study adds insights about considering sacred groves as informal components of nature conservation planning in a Middle Eastern study area in the Iranian part of Kurdistan. It highlights that focusing on social dynamics is an important complement to the currently prevailing ecological studies of sacred groves, because 'the role of the sacred groves as biodiversity hotspots and providers of ecosystem services cannot be separated from the social context in which they exist' (Blicharska et al., 2013, p. 339).
An important insight from our study is that sacred groves in We end our study with a reflection on its broader implications for conservation science and practice in the Middle East. We conclude that maintaining and fostering informal conservation tra- Biocultural approaches to conservation that incorporate diverse worldviews and knowledge systems have the potential to translate these taboos and their related land-use practices into socially acceptable and environmentally effective conservation outcomes.
Integrated landscape management and the design of robust institutional arrangements may offer pathways to identify, manage and negotiate these conflicts, pressures and threats, but need to be interpreted and applied to Middle Eastern realities. This requires particular consideration of questions of agency, access and the autonomy of local communities. Eliciting the traditional knowledge and management practices of sacred groves and empowering people to maintain and revitalise their customs, values and taboos through socioeconomic modernisation is crucial for any conservation strategy.
At the same time, local residents who are young, male more urban and follow a modern lifestyle could be an important audience for awareness-raising conservation programs. Intervention from outside needs great sensitivity, however, in the complicated sociopolitical context of Kurdistan.

ACK N OWLED G EM ENTS
This research was supported by a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany). We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

CO N FLI C T S O F I NTE R E S T S
T.P. is an Associate Editor for People and Nature, but was not involved in the peer review and decision-making process.

AUTH O R S ' CO NTR I B UTI O N S
T.P. and Z.S. conceived the ideas and designed methodology; Z.S. and K.M.S. collected the data; C.Q.-S. and M.T. analysed the data; T.P. led the writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
Raw data are archived on the Zenodo repository https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.4045371 .