Sırtlandağı Aleppo Pine Nature Conservation Area is closed to visitors: the Directorate General of Nature Conservation and National Parks states plainly that entering without permission is prohibited. It lies at the Sırtlandağı locality within the Milas Forest Management Directorate, in Muğla province.
The reason for the protection is a single tree species. Aleppo pine, Pinus halepensis, has its main range on the western Mediterranean coast; in Türkiye it occurs in only two localities, one among the red pines near Karatepe at Kızyusuflu village in Adana's Kadirli district, and the other around the Gulf of Güvercinlik between Milas and Bodrum. Sırtlandağı belongs to the second. The directorate describes it as the largest natural range in the country where the species forms pure and mixed stands, and protects it as a rare ecosystem with genetic reserve value. Red pine grows there alongside it.
The boundary has been redrawn three times since the area was declared. The area was declared on 17 August 1988 at 784 hectares. As the natural cover deteriorated in parts of it, a ministerial approval dated 23 February 1995 and numbered 34 redrew the limit at 760 hectares. A later approval from the Directorate General digitised the boundary using the 1981 forest delimitation maps, giving 714.74 hectares. Most recently, an approval dated 6 August 2025 and numbered 20467515 resolved mismatches with the current cadastral lines and set the area at 735.56 hectares.
Aleppo pine is easy to recognise where it can be seen legitimately elsewhere. Unlike other pines its crown is rounded in youth and spreads into an umbrella with age. The buds are small and free of resin, pointed and egg-shaped, with scale tips curling backwards; the needles are light green and their basal sheath is 10 to 12 millimetres long. Cones ripen over two years, turning glossy brown, long and conical on a thick stalk that leaves them hanging almost parallel to the shoot.
- Designated
- 17.08.1988
When to go
- Climate
- Across Muğla as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 10.8 °C in January to 27.6 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, June, September, October and November; rainfall is heaviest in December (207 mm) and lightest in August (4 mm). Long-term means for 2001-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
