Effective Old-Growth Conservation Requires Coordinated Actions Across Scales of Space, Time, and Biodiversity

Effective conservation of old-growth ecosystems, along with their unique biodiversity and climate benefits, requires coordinated actions from the scale of individual trees to broad regions. The US government is currently developing a conservation strategy for old-growth forest on federal lands, and similar efforts are occurring globally as nations implement the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. An effective strategy must include elements at three spatiotemporal scales: immediate restrictions on harvest of old-growth and mature forests and old trees, standards to ensure management activities do not degrade old growth at the stand scale, and longer-term planning for old-growth restoration and recruitment across landscapes. Lessons from previous US forest policy, especially the Northwest Forest Plan, can inform efforts to strengthen each of these three components in the US old-growth conservation strategy. Ecosystem-based standards are needed to ensure protection of sufficient mature forest so that recruitment into the old-growth stage shifts ecosystems closer to historic proportions of old growth. In addition to clarifying existing goals related to ecological integrity, comprehensive old-growth policy must incorporate specific goals for recovering at-risk species based on empirical relationships across scales of biodiversity between forest habitat and species viability that are relevant across varied ecological contexts. Reversing extinction debt and ensuring long-term adaptation potential requires designation of large landscapes anchored by remaining old-growth stands, surrounded by areas managed for restoration of ecological integrity, native biodiversity, and ecosystem services including climate change mitigation.