Forest management plans

Forest management is concerned with organizing the course of production in a forest holding and developing such forms of production that ensure the continuity of forests and their social utility. Forest management is based on the natural and economic properties of forest production, combining the scientific achievements and knowledge of silviculture, forest protection, and use, forest geodesy, and hunting. It serves to improve the management technique over 10-year periods and once every 10 years presents it synthetically for each Forest District in a draft of all management tasks – the Forest Management Plan (abbreviated in Polish to PUL).

The main objectives and tasks of forest management are:

• inventory and assessment of the condition of forests, including soils, habitats, stands, and natural values and to define and shape the natural relationships among them;
• recognition of basic assumptions of the region’s spatial management policy concerning forest management and nature protection with regard to regional development strategies and regional nature protection programmes, including Natura 2000 areas;
• setting objectives and methods of implementation of sustainable forest management, regarding all functions of forests and the adopted management objectives;
• defining management tasks for the 10-year period and specifying methods of their implementation, which should result in desirable species, age, and spatial structure of stands, as well as their spare productive stock;
• geospatial imaging (visualization) of the managed site, forest functions, inventory results, and forest management tasks;
• drawing up a general description of the forest, including the data on natural and economic conditions, analysis of forest management in the past period, objectives and principles of future management, designed methods of forest management, tasks for the next decade, programme of nature protection for a forest district and a forecast of the state of timber resources at the end of the planning period.

Forest management plans are prepared on the legal basis of the following acts and regulations:

• Forest Act of 28 September 1991 (Journal of Laws 1991, No. 101/444, Chapter 4, Articles 18–25);
• Regulation of the Minister of the Environment of 12 November 2012 on detailed conditions and procedures for drawing up a forest management plan, simplified forest management plan, and inventory of forest condition (Journal of Laws 2012/1302);
• Forest Management Planning Guidelines of 2011 (applicable in the State Forests National Forest Holding);

Forest management plans and simplified forest management plans drawn up for forests constituting part of the Agriculture Property Resource of the State Treasury are approved and supervised by the Minister responsible for the environment.