Acta Scientiarum Polonorum
Silvarum Colendarum Ratio et Industria Lignaria

To date Polish literature on the subject has not discussed in a synthetic manner the ecological, operating and financial risk. Problems of financial risk have been analysed only sporadically. As a result no model is available to deal with risk management in Polish forestry.
The first step in the development of such a model is to identify various risk groups, including financial risk. This paper presents an attempt at assessing the importance of identification of such a risk. For this purpose induction and deduction methods were applied using literature on
finances, economics and forestry. As a result it was found that in forestry identification of financial risk is a highly complicated process due to environmental factors having a direct effect on economic aspects of economic operations. There are three basic risk types (catastrophic,
operating, financial), which overlap. In the risk management process an important role is played by the retrospective analysis of historical data, while the effects of risk taking may be economic and social.