Candidate Old Growth Management Areas

Old growth forests, often over 250 years in age, contain unique habitat structures which typically take a long period of time to develop. Consequently, these structures also take a long period of time to replace if they are removed by logging or wildfire.

At the same time, old forests in the Kootenay Lake District rarely escape natural disturbance completely. Stand-replacing wildfires may come infrequently in some of the wetter parts of the District, but in dry years these areas may have extremely intense burns due to high levels of fuel.

It is anticipated that these candidate OGMAs will be largely avoided by logging companies in the foreseeable future, and that introduction of a range of harvest patch sizes will provide future options for old growth forest.

See the “landscape units” section for more detail on old growth forest and related issues.