• On 14 July 2026, the Council of Ministers has adopted a draft bill increasing funding for nature conservation.
• It is estimated that an additional PLN 200 million per year will be allocated to nature conservation.
• Beneficiaries of the funding will include national parks, general and regional environmental protection directorates, landscape parks and their management teams.
• Among other things, the new mechanism will facilitate the use of EU funds by providing the necessary resources for the required own contribution.
• The amount of funding will be linked to the revenue generated from timber sales by the State Forests.

The Council of Ministers has adopted a draft bill amending the Act on Forests and the Act on Environmental Protection (UD108), prepared by the Ministry of Climate and Environment. The new provisions introduce a permanent funding mechanism for activities related to nature conservation in the broadest sense. The draft addresses the problem of insufficient funds for implementing tasks related both to the preparation of conservation plans for national parks, nature reserves and Natura 2000 sites, and to the creation of new forms of protection, the conduct of nature inventories and active conservation measures.

In recent years, making full use of external funding, mainly from the EU, has become an increasingly significant challenge. National and landscape parks have often been unable to access available funds because they lacked the necessary own contribution. The new mechanism is intended to resolve this problem and increase the funding opportunities for nature conservation activities.

Under the Act, additional funds will be channelled to the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management (NFEP&WM), which will finance nature conservation activities. Ultimately, the beneficiaries of these funds will be national and landscape parks, as well as regional environmental protection directorates – the institutions responsible for protecting Poland’s most valuable natural areas.

The source of this additional funding will be annual contributions from the State Forests National Forest Holding to the NFEP&WM. The amount of these contributions will depend on revenue from timber sales in forest districts. It is estimated that, as a result, as much as over PLN 200 million a year will be channelled into nature conservation.

The State Forests have been generating a profit for many years, which allows for the introduction of this new funding mechanism without jeopardising the stability of their operations. Last year, the profit amounted to approximately PLN 570 million, and in 2024 it reached PLN 764 million.

The adoption of the draft bill is an important step towards creating a stable system for funding nature conservation in Poland.