Poland’s climate and environment ministry has inaugurated the first of 11 planned “community forests” around large cities, with the aim of giving residents a place for recreation and contact with nature while also helping to fulfil the government’s pledge to reduce logging.

Plans for the forests were announced in 2024, and the first has now been established around Wrocław, Poland’s third-largest city. Ten other major urban centres, including Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań and Łódź, are set to follow.

“This is a historic moment and the beginning of a new approach to forest protection – with residents in mind first and foremost,” said climate and environment minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska at an inauguration ceremony outside Wrocław on Sunday.

“Community forests are places where residents can relax, play sports and simply spend time close to nature,” she added. “At the same time, they are crucial to our security and quality of life: they retain water, regulate the climate, purify the air and protect the soil.”

An area covering 13,000 hectares (32,124 acres) has been designated as a community forest around Wrocław. Forest management there will now be aimed at “maximising the forest’s social functions”, says the ministry, while timber harvesting is also restricted.

The area will be divided into three zones, including “natural forests”, where nature will be left to take its course, and “near-natural forests” with minimal intervention.

However, the largest zone, amounting to over 8,000 hectares, will be “social forests”, which the state forestry agency says “will be managed in a way that ensures the comfort of those who use the forest and its benefits related to wellbeing, physical exercise and recreation”.

Hennig-Kloska noted that, in the latter area, educational trails as well as hiking and cycling paths would be established. However, given that such facilities already exist in many forests, it remains unclear how the new community forests will differ.

The ministry is now conducting consultations and analysis on establishing community forests around ten other designated urban centres: Bielsko-Biała, Tricity (Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot), Katowice, Kielce, Kraków, Łódź, Poznań, Szczecin, Toruń-Bydgoszcz and Warsaw.

On Sunday, Hennig-Kloska said that the “next in line” to have their community forests established are Kielce and Bielsko-Biała, reported the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

Shortly after coming to power in December 2023, the current government announced that it would halt planned logging in some forests. The former Law and Justice (PiS) administration had faced criticism for overseeing an increase in logging, especially in Białowieża Forest.

The current government also launched plans to create Poland’s first new national parks in over two decades. However, PiS-aligned President Karol Nawrocki last year vetoed that move, arguing that it would “block the economic development of the region” and threaten Poland’s security.

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Main image credit: MKiŚ (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)