Application of plant quarantine in forest products imports in Zonguldak province

The quarantine controls that is inspected within plant quarantine regulation and relevant legislation of forest product import that inspected by the quarantine inspectors of Zonguldak Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry Directorate of Crop Production and Plant Health from 2015 to 2017 is examined at this study. In this study, it has been aimed that being detected the type, amount and the origin of the product that is inspected, whether the product is carried with foreign invasive species, detection of species carried in case of foreign invasion and create awareness on the transportation of foreign invasive species in forest products imports. Zonguldak has been chosen as a study area due to the Zonguldak Customs Directorate that is one of the 48 customs offices authorized to import forest products to our country, and the port where the control operations are carried out is a preferred entry point for the forest products to be imported from the Black Sea countries such as Ukraine, Russian Federation and Belarus. The international organisations and the international agreements that create framework for the plant quarantine inspections and the contacts of the Republic of Turkey with these organisations and agreements have been examined in this study. The study contain the legislation of Turkey on quarantine practices, and the institutions that carried out the quarantine controls, and the authorized custom managements on the forest product import has been listed. In addition, the literature rewiev about the emergence of the concept of quarantine, the start, development and reach the current statue of quarantine was carried out. The data and information obtained from Zonguldak Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry have been processed and prepared by using simple mathematical and graphical methods via Excel programme. Between 2015-2017 years, it has seen that the 98,03% of the forest product which was inspected by plant quarantine, was imported from Ukraine. And others were imported from respectively Russian Federation, Belarus and China. It has seen that 93,39% of forest product inspected by quarantine inspectors was coniferous species as pine, spruce and fir. Except those, oak, ash, linden, poplar, birch, hornbeam, beech species and wood packaging materials used to support products transported in international trade was inspected. Of the 11636 transactions carried out between 2015-2017, 137 were found to be non-compliant. The reason of the 129 non-compliant of 137 transactions were found to be harmful pest or harmful pest residues on the forest product. 8 non-compliant of 137 transactions were due to the lack of document or lack of information in the document and lack of additional decleration after the result of the document checks. Of the 129 non-complience that were found to be non-compliant due to harmful or harmful traces, 120 were Monochamus spp., 2 were Aconthocinus spp., 1 were Tomicus piniperda, 1 were Arhopalus spp., 1 were Sirex noctilio and 4 were non-quarantine pests which has not be able to be identificated.