Protection and Monitoring of Inanimate Nature in the Actions of Landscape Parks — the Example of Poland (EU)

Abstract

The paper presents the legal protection status in the areas of landscape parks in Poland, whose current number is 126. The structure and effectiveness of provisions pertaining to the protection plans for landscape parks have been presented, mainly in the context of inanimate nature elements. It has been concluded that currently fewer than half of the landscape parks have valid protection plans and that their provisions and the level of detail vary greatly from park to park. After analysing the existing protection plans, it has been noticed that the provisions concerning the protection of inanimate nature elements constitute a definite minority in relation to the provisions concerning animate nature, cultural and historical, or landscape values. The consequences of the lack of regulations and actual actions in the sphere of permanent, organised monitoring of inanimate nature elements have been indicated. The paper also points out how the necessity for the park protection plans to obtain the status of a local legal act, at least in the part concerning broadly understood spatial planning, would be important and beneficial for the management of active nature conservation in the area of the entire landscape park. Furthermore, the paper underlines the importance of obtaining an appropriate amount of data from inventory and scientific research, as well as constant monitoring of animate and inanimate nature resources located in each of the parks.