Forest development and conservation policy in Poland

Abstract Whilst, in many countries, the scale of forest loss from business-as-usual development is immense, in Poland, this problem does not exist. However, obtaining additional land areas for afforestation is a main issue in Poland. In Poland, after the World War II, the forest area has been systematically growing. In 1945, the forest area was about 6.5 million ha, and the forest cover was 21%. In 2016, the forest area reached 9.2 million ha, and forest cover amounted to 29.5%. Today, there are 0.24 ha of forests per one inhabitant of Poland. The size of wood resources in stands is also changing. In 1945, forest resources on the trunk amounted to approximately 906 million m3, and in 2016, it reached 2.4 million m3. The problem, however, is the uneven distribution of forests in Poland. Forests in Poland are very strictly protected by law. There are two most important acts, Forest Act of 2001 and Nature Conservation Act of 2004, that regulate principles for the retention, protection and augmentation of forest resources. Over the past decades in Poland, the social demands regarding non-economical functions of forest such as recreational activities, soil and water protection and mitigation of global warming became an important and constantly growing challenge for forest managers. Thus we suggest that, first of all, it is very important to extract the leading function for a given forest area. Interactions between development and conservations policies are very tied and may suggest the need of their integration. In this article, we present the concept of development policy for forest management and forest protection in Poland.