The article discusses the prospects and relevance of the forest industry development, the reforms and institutional changes in the forest sector. The socio-economic conditions of sustainable development of forestry and the urgent need to rethink the processes associated with the development of the forestry system in Russia, alongside with the social consequences of the forest policy are studied. The need for studying forest policy and its improvement in the context of sociological science is updated. The study reflects a fairly low level of public awareness of activities in the field of forestry. The lack of serious, qualified materials about problems in the forest sector is pointed out. A rather low level of public awareness of the state forest policy is also recorded, as the prevailing percentage of the respondents have never heard of forest policy. It is noteworthy that the highest level of awareness is observed among such reference groups as: “state authorities”; “scientific organizations”; “schools”. The respondents negatively assess the openness of forestry authorities. Basically, this fact is associated with insufficient information about the work of forestry – the lack of openness and a special body informing the public about the forest, as well as the lack of statistics and reports in the public domain.