The survey carried out among university students has proved that they choose the forest as a place to spend their leisure time mostly in the spring (13.2%) and in the summer (21.2%). Students declare that they relaxed in the forest even a few times a week. Apart from recreation (walking - 61.6%, picking mushrooms - 37%), they engage in health improving activities, including sport (29.4%). Young people (especially town dwellers - 40.2%) decide go to the forest to get away from everyday routine (33.9%) in search of peace and quiet surroundings (40.5%). They do not have any specific preferences for the type of forest (50.1%), they feel good in mixed forests (31.9%), however. Since the forms of activity most frequently indicated by students are hiking and biking, they notice poor infrastructure of forest areas (lack of marked hiking routes - 14.3% and bicycle lanes - 12.5%). Respondents are familiar with the condition of forests in the proximity of the place of their residence (81.6%), considering it as basically good (75.9%). However, their knowledge of the natural environment protection forms and fire protection rules is definitely insufficient. ...
The paper aims at demonstrating the importance of tourism meant as an activity and economic activity in the multifunctional development of mountain rural areas. Multifunctional development of mountain rural areas appears as a composition of other, nonfarm functions, connected with agriculture and its environment. Taking over nonfarm functions by rural areas, including tourist function, enables decreasing agrarian unemployment and, furthermore, the emigration of local population. Approximating living standards of rural communities and city dwellers is connected with modernizing and development of technical-economic and social infrastructure, which has a stimulating impact on the development of off-farm activities in rural areas, which in turn positively affects economic development and increases the number of new jobs. Mutlifunctionality of mountain rural areas is therefore necessary not only from the economic perspective but also from the social point of view. ...
