A study on wood import situation and solutions to facilitate it in Iran

Nowadays as a result of low amount of harvestable forest products, low areas of wood plantation and increasing need of wood industry to wood and cellulose products, importing wood and its different products has become one of the unavoidable necessities in order to protect forests and answer the need of wood industries. As different species of important non-native pests can inter the country with wooden products and cause severe damage, preparing and introducing scientific and technical quarantine rule for importing plants and regarding them by wood importers can play an important role in preventing the pests to inter the country. This fact can not be done without careful study and research, something that is now perfectly done in European countries, North America, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and some other countries. The current quarantine rules for importing wood and wooden products in Iran are mainly planed based on international standards and results of the researches carried out in other countries. In order to facilitate importing wood and wooden products to the country, some revisions and corrections have to be done in the rules based on native researches and studies. Determination of research priorities, forming skilled scientific research groups including native professionals and researchers and trying to perform basic as well as applied researches to clear the dark points and answering the main questions and solving problems of quarantine rules of importation can be done primarily to prepare a proper field to write and compile scientific and technical rules. Such affairs are among the duties that should be taken care of by responsible authorities such as Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands of Iran as well as Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection. It is clear that these affaires will end to facilitate importation and also protect the basic principals of plant quarantine rules. In this article after a review of wood resources, product capacity of related industries and need of the country to wood importation, role of wood and wooden products in dispersing quarantine pests in the importer country will be considered; then after emphasis on importance of observing and regarding plant quarantine rules in importing wood products, problems and limits of the current rules have been studied. Necessity of revision and correction of the current rules based on native researches and knowledge have been discussed and in the end a list of some priorities in native research that should be done to improve quarantine rules of wood and its products have been mentioned that their results affect and revise plant quarantine rules and facilitate importation of wood and its products as well s protection of plants and plants' health care.