The Azerbaijan Newt which has been listed among species in danger of extinction was spotted and documented in northwestern Iran for the first time, an environmental official said.
Majid Kharrazian, head of the Department of Environment’s Office for Biodiversity and Wildlife, said that “an expert with the office’s Reptiles and Amphibians Group in cooperation with experts of DOE offices in West Azerbaijan Province and the town of Oshnavieh managed to record the presence of Azerbaijan newt in Oshnavieh border area last month.”
“They found 12 Azerbaijani newts,” he was quoted by Mehr News Agency as saying on Tuesday.
It is the first time that “the population of the Azerbaijan newt has been recorded in West Azerbaijan Province,” Kharrazian said, adding that “it was the first sighting of the species reported by the Reptiles And Amphibians Group.”
Also known as Neurergus crocatus, the yellow-spotted newt and the Lake Urmia newt, the reptile is a salamander on the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
It inhabits southeast of Turkey, northern Iraq and northwest of Iran.
