The role of forest management planning in the building of a planning-forecasting system in forestry

The large experience and potential of the Forest Management and Survey Bureau (Biuro Urzadzania Lasu i Geodezji Lesnej - BULiGL) has been built over its 50 years of activity and includes: preparation of hundreds of forest management plans and soil-habitat documentations, carrying out many forest resource status updates, as well as a number of large-scale inventories of the health and sanitary condition of forests. These achievements have become the basis for naming the BULiGL, in the "National Policy on Forests", an enterprise actively involved in the implementation of the forest policy. This document also pointed to the need to transform the BULiGL into a planning-forecasting body in forestry. The main tasks of the BULiGL in this system should include work connected with the monitoring of the size, condition and structure of forests (including large-scale inventory of forest resources, updating of the forest resource inventory, and forest monitoring), preparing forecasts and making forest management plans. The paper emphasises that efficient implementation of the above tasks will depend on the appropriate positioning (organisational and legal) of the forest management service enabling preservation of a high quality and uniformity of studies, as well as their timely completion. This applies particularly to forest management plans - the main documents of forest economy having a great impact on the condition of natural environment. This positioning should also facilitate separation of the forest management task planning stage from the implementation stage of the forest management plans in the State Forests NFH. Moreover, it should provide objective information for the needs of forest supervision (by the relevant minister responsible for the environment in state forests and by local administration for the forests not owned by the state). The adopted solutions should also improve the development and then the functioning of a data bank containing information on forest resources and on the condition of forests in Poland, enabling analyses of the condition of forests in the required variants. The current solutions in this respect, resulting from the amended "Forest Act", give the BULiGL an exclusive right to carry out periodical large-scale inventories of forest resources update forest resource statistics and draw up forest management plans for forests administered by the State Forests NFH. This is justified not only by the specific of the subject matter, but also by the special rank of the BULiGL (an enterprise of special importance for the national economy) and State Forests NFH (a unit without legal personality reporting to the relevant environmental minister), as well as by the need to take greater rare of the State Treasury's property and strengthen the national status of the State Forests NFH. Attention is drawn in the paper to the fact that, besides the tasks carried out exclusively by the BULiGL, a wide range of works start to be contracted. This applies particularly to the drawing up of forest management plans for forests not administered by the State Forests NFH, simplified forest management plans, or plans for the protection of nature reserves, landscape parks and NATURA 2000 areas. The paper also emphasises the need for close mutual cooperation of the State Forests National Forest Holding with the Forest Management and Survey Bureau - BULiGL, the Forest Research Institute - IBL and the Forest Departments in Cracow, Poznan and Warsaw in solving the most important forest management problems in Poland. Such cooperation is essential for efficient implementation of the tasks resulting from the planning-forecasting system in forestry.