From Vietnam to the Middle East

The untold story of an American who reshaped conservation abroad

Dr Fred Harrington. Photograph by the author, April 2019

“The most surprising phenomenon in human behaviour is people’s inability to change their minds despite overwhelming evidence against their.”–Dr Gad Saad

For years, it was as if many preferred to forget him. His name survived only in the opening pages of The Mammals of Iran (1975) or in a handful of articles beside that of Eskandar Firouz, a founding father of Iran’s Department of Environment. Yet he was among the most influential environmental figures in the 1970s. The seeds he planted quickly took root and bore fruit, enduring more than four decades of ecological degradation. This is a brief story about who Dr Fred Harrington was and the legacy he left behind for nature.

Origins in the American West

Harrington was born in the mid-1930s in the cold, forested state of Colorado, into a family deeply attuned to nature. He fondly recalled his grandmother, a champion rodeo rider, and his father, a civil engineer whose work took the family south to Albuquerque, in the arid expanses of New Mexico. It was there that he enrolled in university, initially studying forestry. But he soon changed course, transferring to Colorado State University to pursue a degree in wildlife biology. Upon graduating in 1959, he returned to New Mexico and took a post as a biologist at the state’s Department of Game and Fish.

Three years later, he joined the U.S. Air Force, driven by a wish to see the land from the sky. He completed a year-long training course and became a second lieutenant and transport pilot. He served five years in the Vietnam War and rose to the rank of captain. The death of a close friend prompted him to leave the military before the war’s end. A shadow passed over his face when he recalled those years. He returned to Colorado for doctoral studies, focusing his dissertation on the life and ecology of bighorn sheep in the Rocky Mountains. It was during this time that one of his professors introduced him to Iran’s Game and Fish Department.

A New Chapter in Iran

In 1970, during a visit to the United States, Eskandar Firouz — then head of Iran’s Game and Fish Department — interviewed Harrington and hired him. In his memoirs, Firouz would later write:

“By the end of the 1960s, we had managed to recruit several of the best-trained experts. One of them was Mr. Fred Harrington. His academic background — wildlife biology and ecology — was precisely what the Department of Environment needed. He had another invaluable qualification: he was a top-class pilot, able to carry out scientific aerial surveys without relying on outside help.”

Harrington with three park rangers, Bahram-e-Gur National Park, June 1971 / Harrington archive.

Among the department’s major achievements was the 1971 Ramsar Conference, which established the Ramsar Convention, a global treaty for the conservation of wetlands and waterbirds. At the time, it was customary for the Shah of Iran to issue an opening message for such events. Firouz asked Harrington to draft the speech in the rousing, evocative style of John F. Kennedy. Harrington produced a forward-thinking, ecologically grounded text — one that, over half a century later, still reads like it was written today. The speech opened with a stark reminder of Iran’s arid climate and the critical importance of wetlands. In a bold closing paragraph, it proposed that one of Iran’s wetlands be placed under the stewardship of an international conservation body — effectively ceding partial sovereign control!? The idea was too radical for its time and never implemented, as international organisations were then unprepared for such commitments. (The speech is archived in Ettela’at newspaper, dated 31 January 1971.)

Geoffrey Matthews, Luc Hoffmann, and Eskandar Firouz at the Ramsar Conference, Ramsar, Iran, February 1971.

Another of Harrington’s landmark contributions was the National Report on the Human Environment, prepared in collaboration with Iran’s Ministry of Health and Tehran’s municipal authorities. Prince Abdolreza, the Shah’s brother and then head of the High Council for Environmental Protection (and previously for Hunting and Game), presented the report at the 1972 Stockholm Conference — the world’s first global environmental summit — where it was named best national submission. Following the conference, Prince Abdolreza tasked Harrington with designing a unified organisational structure and mandate for Iran’s newly rebranded Department of Environment.

Just three months before the Stockholm summit, the Iranian Parliament had passed a law reorganising various ministries, renaming the Game and Fish Department as the Department of Environment. However, its functions and authority remained largely unchanged. Within a year, Harrington had completed the new framework and responsibilities of the agency. In June 1974, Iran’s National Consultative Assembly passed them into law as the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act.

A System Builder and Pioneer

As Firouz later wrote, “Harrington effectively ran the Department’s Office of Research and Development.” Bijan Farhang Darrehshouri, one of Iran’s leading conservationists, recalled that even officials on assignment were required to attend monthly meetings on the first Sunday of every month to report on past work and outline future plans. The office, under Harrington’s leadership, was responsible for identifying and demarcating Iran’s network of protected areas.

He spearheaded the development of a modern system of protected areas — a model that would later be replicated in Georgia and elsewhere in the United States, and subsequently around the world. His remit was broad: from fieldwork and aerial surveys to public education and scientific publishing. He invited prominent experts such as the ornithologist Derek Scott to Iran and oversaw the production of both technical and popular materials on nature and conservation. His initiatives included aerial mapping of Iran’s southern coastlines, the capture and relocation of animals such as leopards and onagers for conservation and breeding purposes, and even the creation of a national marine park.

Harrington with Wels catfish (Silurus glanis), Anzali Lagoon, August 1971 / Harrington archive.

Harrington was also the first to confirm the continued presence of the Asiatic cheetah in Iran. At a time when the species was presumed extinct, he reported sightings to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), estimating that between 100 and 200 individuals remained. He authored The Mammals of Iran, the country’s first public-facing book on the subject, which served for many years as the sole reference work. He also compiled an extensive collection of specimens and data for a more technical volume that, unfortunately, he never had the chance to publish. In 1977, while in Germany assisting with a documentary on Iran’s wildlife, his ties with the Iranian government were abruptly severed. After the 1979 revolution, his dream of returning to the country he loved would remain unfulfilled.

Return to the United States

Back in the U.S., Harrington worked briefly for The Nature Conservancy, a prominent environmental NGO, before establishing his own consulting firm. He secured a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy via Ebasco Engineering to oversee the environmental remediation of part of the Rocky Mountains. The area — once a production site for American chemical weapons — had been labelled “the most contaminated place on Earth.” He also led feasibility studies for the cleanup of the Rocky Flats nuclear plant near Denver. Both sites were ultimately transformed into wildlife refuges.

Later, Harrington and his wife returned to Colorado, settling in the Pawnee Grasslands in the state’s north. There, they restored a historic guesthouse for visiting birdwatchers, naming it the Plover Inn — after the small wading bird known in Persian as salim. A few years on, they shuttered the inn and moved to a modest, century-old home in Arkansas, where they spent their retirement. On 14 August 2021, Fred Harrington — environmentalist, pilot, biologist, and quiet architect of Iran’s conservation legacy — died of a heart attack.

The author has also documented Harrington’s work in Iran in a feature-length documentary titled “Fred Harrington: A Name Crossed Out.”

Originally published on Radio Farda/Radio Free Europe, August 31, 2021.

Translated from Farsi via machine translation and lightly edited for clarity.