Productive and non-productive functions of forests are strongly affected by their health condition and abiotic and biotic damage. Both direct and indirect economic and environmental impacts of forest damage are very significant. „Forest protection” is a term used in the most diverse, narrow or broad, sense. Forest protection is a field of science comprehending the forecast, prevention, elimination of damage, and the reduction of harmful 
effects. In the narrow sense, as a field of study, it is actually the healthcare of forests. However, modern forest protection has a much broader scope than merely the protection of trees of economic value. Talking about the healthy functioning of forest ecosystems including the decrease of the risk of forest damages of different sources it is not enough to consider stands only. More and more results have proved that previously neglected elements (e.g. weed trees, herbaceous 
plants, dead trees etc.), besides their relations to nature conservation, have also a number of positive effects on the stability, self-controlling ability, and health of forests. This will significantly reduce the risk of severe damages of forests and their negative economic and ecological effects. Forest protection is actually a field of science, which, among others, combines the results of site survey, silviculture, pathology, entomology, ecology, biochemistry, and those of plant breeding. Today, technology-based stand protection related first of all to plantations becomes more distinguished from the ecology-based forest 
protection related to semi-natural forests. Compared to elimination technologies prevention has an increasing importance in forest protection, forest healthcare. However, with the development of plantation wood production, we also need the development of effective but environmental-friendly eliminating technologies. In this respect the expansion of short rotation energy crops is also a new challenge. In the last decades, both biotic and abiotic damages are apparently growing in Hungarian forests. The increase in the number of non-native invasive pests and pathogens is rapidly accelerating both in Europe and in Hungary. These facts will most probably lead to the growing importance of forest protection and that of the value of this research field in the future.