Northern Iran’s wetlands are collapsing, leaving once-thriving bird habitats eerily silent. In Golestan province, hundreds of thousands of migratory birds failed to arrive this autumn, with drought and upstream dams pushing the region toward ecological collapse. “This year the sky over Golestan is empty,” Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Monday. The decline in northern wetlands reflects a broader water crisis across Iran. Rivers and lakes are shrinking , groundwater is rapidly depleting,