The subject of this statement will be to look at environmental protection as a responsibility of public authorities. This obligation is enshrined in Article 74, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, and its concretisation is the relevant statutory provisions. Recently, however, the implementation of this obligation has aroused a lot of emotion in both science and journalism. These resulted from the fact of increasing the limits of tree felling and physical undertaking of this felling in the Białowieża forest, on the basis of the decision of the Minister of Environment. The decision was challenged before the Court of Justice of the European Union, which found that Poland had infringed EU law. In the context of this judgment, the question arises as to whether the Polish authorities are in fact fulfilling well the obligations imposed by the legislator in the field of environmental protection, or whether not only EU law has been violated, but also the Constitution of the Republic of Poland.