Old-growth Forest - Management

Management

The increased understanding of forest dynamics in the late 20th Century has led the scientific community to identify a need to inventory, understand, manage and conserve representative examples of old-growth forests with their associated characteristics and values. The literature around old growth and its management is inconclusive about the best way to capture the true essence of an old growth stand. In British Columbia, Canada, old-growth forests must be maintained in each of the province’s ecological units to meet biodiversity needs.

A better understanding of natural systems has resulted in new ideas about forest management, such as managed natural disturbances should be designed to achieve the landscape patterns and habitat conditions that are normally maintained in nature (DeLong 1998; Wong and Iverson 2004). This coarse filter approach to biodiversity conservation recognizes ecological processes and provides for a dynamic distribution of old growth across the landscape. And all seral stages – young, medium and old – support forest biodiversity. Plants and animals rely on different forest ecosystem stages to meet their habitat needs.

In Australia, the regional forest agreement (RFA) attempted to prevent the clearfelling of defined "Old Growth Forests". This led to struggles over what constitutes "Old Growth". For example in Western Australia, the timber industry tried to limit the area of Old Growth in the karri forests of the Southern Forests Region; this led to the creation of the Western Australian Forests Alliance, the splitting of the Liberal Government of Western Australia and the election of the Gallop Labor Government. Old Growth Forests in this region have now been placed inside National Parks. A small proportion of Old Growth Forest also exists in South-West Australia, and is protected by a Federal laws from logging, which hasn't occurred there for more than twenty years.