Prepared by Bruce R. Lippke, Kevin W. Zobrist and C. Larry Mason

Abstract

Development of sustainable forest management alternatives for the Olympic Experimental State Forest (OESF) that simultaneously produce a combination of environmental conditions and harvest revenues to meet the stewardship objectives of the State of Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) imposes a difficult burden with high hurdles that must be met. One important environmental objective for the DNR is the development of management strategies that produce old forest habitats. A rigorous statistical assessment process for evaluating old forest attributes and economic viability of management alternatives was developed to test a wide range of biodiversity management pathways towards achievement of DNR management objectives. Alternatives that produced the best integrated results were selected to develop management templates to provide easy-to-use implementation guidelines for forest managers to identify stands and treatments most likely to contribute to desired old forest conditions. Findings also provide a validation process for adaptively extending OESF templates to other areas and for educating the public on the advantages of biodiversity templates to both the trust beneficiaries and to the forest environment.

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Templates for Forest Sustainability