Bory Tucholskie: the park where you may not step off the trail

A rule about your feet rather than your basket

The standing visitor notice of Bory Tucholskie National Park, in the version carrying the date 29 April 2026, opens mildly. It describes the trail surface — sand, uneven ground, tree roots across the path — and reports that all trails in the park are currently open. The third section changes the meaning of everything around it. Its heading translates as a ban on entering the park’s forest ground, and it records that since August 2017, under the director’s order no. 12/20 of 30 April 2020, movement is permitted only on waymarked trails and educational paths. You may not step off a trail, take an unmarked path or track, or walk into the stand. Visiting runs from dawn to dusk, in any season, on foot, by bicycle and on cross-country skis. The whole notice fits on one page, and it, not a tourist leaflet, is what governs a visit.

The park is small. It covers 4,613.04 hectares in Pomorskie voivodeship, in Chojnice county, within the boundaries of the Chojnice and Brusy municipalities, with a buffer strip of 12,980.52 hectares around it. It is divided into four protection districts: Bachorze at 1,519.98 ha, Drzewicz at 1,544.96 ha, Dębowa Góra at 996.12 ha and Wodny at 530.36 ha. It was created on 1 July 1996 under a Council of Ministers regulation of 14 May 1996 (Dz. U. No. 64, item 305), amended on 14 June 1999 (Dz. U. No. 53, item 555).

Rule seven forbids it, rule eight allows it

The numbered visiting rules on that page set out, at point 7, what is prohibited in the park in particular. Sub-point b covers the collecting of wild-growing plants and fungi and of parts of them. If reading stopped there, the matter would be settled.

It does not stop there. Point 8, on the same page and in the same list, permits the collecting of the fruits of plants of the genus Vaccinium and of edible fungi not covered by species protection, during the period from 1 June to 31 October, outside strict-protection areas, animal refuges, forest plantations and young stands up to 4 m in height, and areas temporarily excluded from public access.

That is a derogation written directly beneath the prohibition it qualifies, not a website error. The June-to-October season that circulates on Polish travel pages comes from this document rather than from somebody’s carelessness. The notice cites its own legal basis: the Nature Conservation Act of 16 April 2004 (Dz. U. 2023 item 1336, as amended by Dz. U. 2023 items 1688 and 1890) and the Minister of the Environment’s regulation of 15 December 2008 establishing the park’s protection plan (Dz. U. 2008 No. 230, item 1545).

What actually keeps the basket empty

The derogation stands. The ground on which it could be exercised is out of reach, because collecting requires leaving the trail and a separate director’s order forbids exactly that. The park draws this conclusion itself, in the same paragraph that imposes the trail rule: there is, it says, no possibility of collecting forest-floor produce there, for instance mushrooms or blueberries. The word doing the work is “there” — the forest ground away from the waymarked routes, which is very nearly the whole park.

The distinction is worth carrying with you. This is not a ban on collecting; it is a ban on movement whose side effect is that no collecting happens. Point 8 has not been repealed. What disappeared is access to the ground it governs.

Even standing on a trail with a fruit body within arm’s reach, the derogation imposes four conditions at once: the species must not be under species protection, the date must fall between 1 June and 31 October, the spot must lie outside strict-protection areas, animal refuges, plantations and young stands up to 4 m, and it must not be temporarily excluded from access. None of those four boundaries is visible from the path, and none of them is settled by this article. They are settled by the park, and the park is the body to ask before anything goes into a basket.

Across the boundary, in the state forests

The Bory Tucholskie forest complex is many times larger than the park. More than 60% of the biosphere reserve is forest, and the reserve’s co-ordinating council includes the State Forests administration alongside the national park and the landscape parks. How the rule reads on state ground is summarised in a single sentence by the Rytel forest district’s guidance: mushrooms in Polish forests may be picked free of charge and in principle without restriction, but there are certain exceptions. The exceptions are the parts of a forest under a permanent entry ban — plantations up to 4 m tall, seed stands, experimental plots, game refuges — together with protected areas, meaning nature reserves and national parks. The same page adds that entry bans on military land must be observed strictly, and that some fungi are under full species protection wherever they grow.

That last clause needs care. The district’s page is guidance summarising the general national rule; it is neither a legal instrument nor a description of this particular park, and here the general rule is modified by point 8 of the park’s access rules. So the contrast between the park and the forest around it is real, but it is not a clean binary. It is not a matter of never against always, but of permitted on paper with nowhere to stand, against permitted provided you avoid a list of exclusions.

One name, three places, two areas

Bory Tucholskie names three different things here, and the collecting rules differ in each: the national park of 4,613.04 ha, the UNESCO biosphere reserve, and the forest region at large. The reserve was designated on 2 June 2010 at the 22nd session of the International Co-ordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Programme. The park describes it as the largest biosphere reserve in Poland, of nearly 320 thousand hectares, in three zones: a core zone of almost 8.12 thousand hectares, comprising the national park and 30 nature reserves; a buffer zone of almost 105 thousand hectares, made up of four landscape parks — Tucholski, Wdecki, Wdzydzki and Zaborski; and a transition zone of 207 thousand hectares across 22 municipalities, thirteen in Kujawsko-Pomorskie and nine in Pomorskie. The reserve’s buffer zone is not the park’s buffer strip: it is built from landscape parks, not from the 12,980.52 hectares that ring the park boundary.

UNESCO’s own record for the same site, filed as Tuchola Forests, gives a different figure: a surface of 639,049.00 ha, almost exactly double. Both records are current, and both come from bodies that either administer or designated the area, so there is no basis for treating either number as an obvious slip — and this article does not choose between them. The same record lists a total population of 127,800, a nomination year of 2010, a location at latitude 53.77 and longitude 17.98, and the habitats of the reserve: pine and deciduous forest, heathland, lobelia lakes, dystrophic lakes with stonewort meadows, and peat bog. Under the heading of fauna, however, it files 33 fungi, which is a fair measure of how coarse the entry is. Anyone quoting an area in an application, a map or a paper should quote the source alongside it.

More than 500 species, on a list still being written

The park opens its paragraph on fungi with a sentence that should travel with the number — the park is still being investigated for its fungal species diversity — and only then gives the figure: more than 500 species of macrofungi described so far, among them 7 protected species, 3 classed as dying out (E), 13 as vulnerable (V), 25 as rare (R) and 20 of indeterminate threat status (I). The order is the point. Five hundred and counting is the present state of knowledge, not a closed inventory.

Lichens were counted separately: 238 species, of which 36 are protected, with 61 appearing on the Polish red list of threatened lichens — 18 with the dying-out status E, 41 vulnerable V and 2 of indeterminate status I. For a visitor obliged to stay on the path that is good news rather than bad. Cladonia mats along the edge of a dry pine stand, beard lichens on branches and lichens on rotting wood are all as visible from a compacted trail as from the thicket, and the park illustrates its lichen list with Cladonia arbuscula among others. Of the slime moulds it names Fuligo septica var. septica and Lycogala epidendrum as common on its ground. Species lists for fungi, lichens and slime moulds recorded in the park can be downloaded from the same page.

Tickets, hours, and what a ticket does not buy

Read on 17 September 2026: a one-day standard ticket costs 6.00 zł, a seven-day standard ticket 30.00 zł, a one-day reduced ticket 3.00 zł and a seven-day reduced ticket 15.00 zł, all inclusive of VAT. The basis is the Minister of the Environment’s regulation of 18 March 2013 (Dz. U. 2021 item 1735); prices can change, so the date of reading belongs with the figure. The 50% reduction under article 12(8) of the Nature Conservation Act applies to school pupils and students, pensioners, disabled people and serving soldiers, on production of proof at inspection. No fee is charged to residents of the municipality of Brusy and the rural municipality of Chojnice, children under 7, or members of large families holding a valid Karta Dużej Rodziny.

Six places are free to enter: the field education base, the angling boat mooring and the viewpoint at Bachorze, the botanical path at the park headquarters in Charzykowy, the Kaszubska Marszruta cycle route and the Nature Education Centre at Chociński Młyn. Those are six designated points, not the park as a whole — and where a ticket is required, it admits you to the marked routes, not to the forest floor.

Tickets are sold at the Nature Education Centre, Chociński Młyn 5, Monday to Friday from 8.00 to 15.00, with the park noting that summer hours may differ; payment can also be made by bank transfer, in which case the proof of payment serves as the ticket. The park headquarters is at ul. Długa 33 in Charzykowy, open Monday to Friday from 7.30 to 15.30.

What to check, and what this article does not settle

Educational and tour groups are capped at 30 people and may move through the park only under a field guide or a park employee; groups of more than 10 must notify the park by e-mail in advance. Scientific research, sporting and recreational events, and filming or photography for commercial purposes all require the director’s written consent, and angling on the open lakes requires a separate permit. Point 12 of the notice reserves the right to suspend every form of public access temporarily during natural hazards or protection work. That means the opening line about every trail being open describes 29 April 2026, not any given September.

This article does not tell you where the strict-protection areas and animal refuges begin, does not list the species under protection, offers no guidance on identifying anything or on whether anything is fit to eat, and does not replace the park’s notice, which is updated from time to time. If you are going for mushrooms, you are going to Bory Tucholskie outside the park. If you are going to the park, you are going to look: at a sandy path with roots across it, at the lichens along its edge, and at the fruit bodies two metres away that will stay exactly where they are.