REGARDING THE ACTIVITY OF A NATIONAL PARK DIRECTOR IN ENSURING THE SAFETY OF TOURISTS VISITING NATIONAL PARK AREAS
Authors: Ruczkowski Piotr 
Published: December 2021

Purpose. The aim of the article is to analyse a national park director's legal position, roles, tasks and legal forms of operations in ensuring the safety of tourists visiting a national park. The objective of this analysis is also to determine whether the legal position, competencies and legal forms of activity at the disposal of the national park director are sufficient to ensure the safety of tourists visiting the national park.

Method. The theoretical nature of this article determines the choice of research methods and their application. A dogmatic method (analytical and dogmatic) involving legal exegesis using linguistic and non-linguistic rules of legal interpretation is the predominant method applied in the article.

Findings. The national park director’s legal status (including his/her position in the system of administering entities) is not clearly defined by the legislator and therefore, raises doubts. The legislature has not explicitly included this entity into the local authorities of consolidated and non-consolidated government administration. The legislator defines a national park director as a national park authority and a nature protection authority, directly indicating that this authority performs the tasks of a regional director aimed at nature protection within the national park area. The director of a national park may be classified as an administering entity, or on account of his/her tasks and powers, a public administration authority in a functional sense. However, it is misleading to treat national park directors as public administration authorities sensu stricto, i.e. the authorities who are part of the state machinery (authorities acting directly on behalf of the state or local self-governments), whose basic and, in principle, sole purpose is to perform public administration tasks (e.g. minister, province administrator, commune head). However, some authors consider national park directors to be public administration bodies sensu stricto [Makuch 2020, p. 527]. It has been confirmed in research that there is great diversity concerning tasks, powers and legal forms of operations at the disposal of a national park director, which can be used to ensure the safety of tourists visiting national parks. These are legal and factual activities of regulatory and non-regulatory nature. The tasks and competencies of national park directors include, first of all, protecting national park resources (environmental protection), which is the essence of their existence, and also providing access to national parks so as to ensure the safety of people who visit them.

Research and conclusions limitations. The author focuses on analysis of the national legal framework. The origin of institutions and comparative legal analyses have been omitted.

Practical implications. In the research, the current legal status is shown, and this can be considered the basis for further legislative work.

Originality. To date, research on the national park directors' tasks, roles and legal forms of operation in ensuring the safety of tourists visiting national parks has been very scarce. Most of such issues are raised while discussing wider problems related to nature protection as well as tourism, and are not subject to in-depth examination [Wolski 2010, pp. 75-83]. In this context, it is worth noting that not only the national park directors' tasks and legal forms of activity require detailed analysis and evaluation, but their status in the state system and position in the system of administering entities as well. The current findings in this field are not sufficiently comprehensive and require further clarification.

Type of paper. The article presents some theoretical concepts. It is a general overview article.