Poland on the way to SDGs. Report 2025

Protected areas are places where nature is under special protection due to the presence of rare species, valuable habitats or unique landscapes. In Poland, these areas cover 32% of its territory, i.e. approximately 10 million hectares. Most of them belong to the European Ecological Network Natura 2000, which includes nearly 20% of the country's land area, i.e. just above the European average (19%). Over 1,000 areas in Poland are in the Natura 2000 network: 868 are areas of special habitat protection and 145 are areas of special bird protection, 10 out of which have a double status. These include river valleys, peat bogs, forest fragments, as well as mountainous and coastal areas. All national parks and some landscape parks are part of the Natura 2000 network. In 2024, areas of special habitat protection accounted for approximately 11% of the country's territory, while areas of special bird protection covered 16%.

Poland is highly biodiverse, with numerous areas and sites that are legally protected due to their unique natural values. The country has 23 national parks, 1,580 nature reserves, 126 landscape parks, 394 protected landscape areas, approximately 8,000 ecological areas and over 35,000 monuments of nature. The largest part of the protected area in Poland are protected landscape areas (68.5%), landscape parks constitute about a quarter, while national parks (3.1%) and nature reserves (1.7%) have a much smaller share, as do landscape-nature complexes (1.2%) and ecological areas and documentation sites (0.6%).

In 2023, Poland ranked third among EU countries in terms of the share of terrestrial protected areas, which amounted to nearly 40%. This result is close to that of the leaders, i.e. Bulgaria and Slovenia (where the percentage of terrestrial protected areas is 44% and 41%, respectively) and significantly higher than the EU average (26%).

Forests are home to approximately 65% of animal and plant species found in Poland. Forest land covers 30% of Poland's land area, while in the whole EU, it accounts for 39%. Forest cover varies greatly across the EU; in five countries, it exceeds 50% of the land area. The leaders in this respect are Finland and Sweden, where forests cover over 60% of the area, followed by Slovenia, Estonia and Latvia (53-58%). The least forested countries are Malta (less than 2%), the Netherlands and Ireland (around 10-12%). Almost the entire area of Polish forests (98% in 2024 compared to 95% in 2015) is covered by sustainable forest management, i.e. it has approved forest management plans.

Polish forests are dominated by stands aged 41–80 years (classes III and IV), covering 43% of the forest area, which is somewhat less than in 2015 (45%). The health of forest stands has been monitored since 1989 as part of Forest Monitoring. In the years 2015–2024, the condition of forests in Poland slightly improved. The proportion of damaged trees (with defoliation above 25%) decreased from 16.7% to 13.9%, although occasional increases were recorded in some years. The share of healthy trees (with defoliation below 10%) remained, as in 2015, at 11.9%, and the average defoliation across all species slightly decreased—from 21.5% to 21.3%. Among conifers, fir is in the best health and beech among deciduous trees. On the other hand, spruce among conifers and oak among deciduous trees are in the poorest condition.