The idea of rebuilding old-growth by well planned ecosystem management has obvious appeal. Some forest plans, including the Northwest Forest Plan, assume that late seral (old-growth) forests will develop automatically when second-growth forests are placed in reserve, particularly if they have biological legacies such as standing live and dead trees and fallen trees or logs. But ecosystem management, Andy Carey says, must evolve. Managing for a fully functioning old-growth ecosystem, requires more than merely preserving some features of an intact ecosystem, such as a certain number of snags and logs per acre.

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