Page 272 - 7. State Of Environment Report Of Türkiye

Graph 58 Distribution of Living Groups Subject to Biosmuggling Cases between 2007-2023 (MoAF, 2024)
30 28 22
Number of cases 20 18 16
25
15
10
5
0 6 5 4 4 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
Other Bulb/Tuberculous Plants Wild Relatives of Cultivated Plants Samples That May Contain Microorganisms, Single-Celled Organisms, or Genetic Material
Birds Butterfly Turtle Snail Snake Fish Lizard Frog
Other Plants Other Insects Salep (Orchid) Salamander Truffle Mushroom Other Animals

Number of Living Creatures

Recording Traditional Knowledge Based on Biodiversity Project

Launched in 2017 with the slogan “Bi’OLogical Diversity from Tradition to Future”, the “Recording
Traditional Knowledge Based on Biological Diversity (BGB) Project” was implemented as a “first”
in the history of the Republic and completed by the end of 2023. With this project, information
on traditional products such as medicines, yeast, dyes, etc. developed by the people by making
use of natural biological resources is compiled and recorded and protected in the “Biodiversit-
y-Based Traditional Knowledge Management System (BGBYS)”, which will be subject to limited
access.

The main objective in establishing this system is to protect intellectual property rights based on
our genetic resources and related traditional knowledge. The system can be used as an effective
and important tool to prevent foreigners from patenting products obtained by using traditional
knowledge based on the biological diversity of Türkiye / to ensure the cancellation of wrongly
acquired patent rights. On the other hand, the system will provide a rich basis for the R&D ac-
tivities to be carried out by the researchers of Türkiye in order to develop products with 100%
domestic and national facilities.
Established in 2019 and started active data entry in 2020, in addition to the collection of the
Republican period country literature in the BGBYS, literature data are collected again from the
provinces where fieldwork is carried out and included in the system. Approximately 118,000
data on traditional knowledge based on biodiversity (BGB), obtained from the field and litera-
ture, have been recorded in the system. Of the recorded data, 86% are related to plant genetic
resources, 12% to animal genetic resources and 2% to fungal genetic resources.

F.3. Protected Areas

In Türkiye, conservation activities are carried out in areas with different statuses such as special
environmental protection areas, national parks, nature parks, nature conservation areas, nature
monuments, wildlife development areas, conservation forests, seed stands, seed gardens and
gene conservation areas, agricultural enterprises, natural and archaeological sites, wetlands and
biosphere reserve areas. Natural Protected Areas, Special Environmental Protection Areas, Na-
tional Parks, Wildlife Development Areas, Wetlands, Nature Parks, Nature Reserves, Protection
Forest and Nature Monuments constitute the Protected Areas in Türkiye.
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