Trombulak (1996) proposed some general principles for planning a landscape-scale approach for old-growth restoration and maintenance:

• Small preserves are more vulnerable to destruction than large ones.  Natural disturbances from wind, fire, and disease are more likely to destroy 10-20 ha stands than 100 + ha stands.
• Old-growth restoration strategies should de-emphasize goals which aim for a specific set of species as an end point because of the natural unpredictability in patterns of species colonization and establishment as well as the impact of anticipated climate change.
• Old-growth restoration plans should apply to the long term-- to centuries.  Long-lived individual trees take centuries to develop old growth characteristics.  In addition, the abiotic and biotic environment in which these trees live also requires these centuries to fully develop into an old-growth community.
• Old-growth restoration efforts should focus on the old growth community complex rather than on a few of its elements in isolation. Old growth restoration may require active management until the conditions for the successful functioning of natural regeneration have been established.  Common impacts that might prevent old-growth from successfully regenerating include: eroded soils, unnaturally high populations of herbivores (deer or domestic animals), exotic plant competitors, exotic insect pests and pathogens, fire suppression and timber harvesting practices that increase the threat to old growth from any of these factors.
• A landscape restoration plan must include an design for human use of the old-growth landscape.  Permissible, as well as prohibited uses, must be clearly spelled out.
• A professionally responsible old-growth restoration plan will avoid questionable practices, which, upon careful examination, fail to bring about the true goal.  Some questionable practices are (Trombulak 1996):
  • Selecting stands for old-growth restoration because they are economically unsuitable for timber harvesting.
  • Selecting primarily recently clearcut or other heavily modified stands for the restoration program when other choices are available.  These types of stands will take so long to develop old-growth characteristics that the plan effectively excludes old-growth from a landscape for centuries to come.
  • Selecting small, widely scattered stands for old-growth restoration.  These isolated patches often have too large a probability distructive disturbance events to ever make it to old-growth status.

Major challenges related to planning at the landscape scale are: (1) deciding which areas we are going to protect and, (2) deciding which of the selected areas are going to be managed by passive restoration and which by active restoration.

Passive management for old growth restoration is simple. In many cases, natural ecological processes and time are all that are required to bring old growth into being (Trombulak 1996).  Protection from extractive utilization by humans will likely allow most second-growth forests in the southern Appalachians to mature into old growth over a 150-400 year timespan (Trombulak 1996). Passive restoration of old growth on public land through the establishment of parks, wilderness areas, and research natural areas has been going on for a long time. Old growth restoration using passive management is likely to succeed if society is willing to accept whatever old-growth forest ecosystems result.

Unfortunately, the impact of past extractive utilization of the forest, climatic change, exotic disturbance agents (such as bittersweet and high density deer populations), and protection from the occurrence of historic fire patterns may make it unlikely that historically representative old-growth forests can be restored using passive management alone.  In such cases, various active management practices might be attempted.

Old growth definitions based on structural characteristics of forests imply that silvicultural techniques can be used to actively create or maintain these old-growth conditions (Tyrell and others 1998):

"Silvicultural manipulations can indeed create or accelerate the formation of some of the structural attributes of old-growth (Nyland 1997): produce large trees through crown release (see also Goodburn and Lorimer 1997, Singer and Lorimer 1997), maintain an irregular upper canopy, increase vertical structural diversity, create snags, mimic gap dynamics (see also Runkle 1991), and increase age diversity. Other practices, such as adding nest boxes or dead logs, provide habitat associated with old-growth (Runkle 1991). However, some old-growth characteristics prevail only with sufficient time. For example, it takes time for abundant coarse woody debris to develop even with silvicultural manipulations (Goodburn and Lorimer 1997), and for logs to reach advanced stages of decay (Tyrrell and Crow 1994)."

Many silvicultural practices might be used in an active old-growth restoration project (Trombulak 1996, Giles 2000):

• Removal of exotic species.
• Thinning selectively to restore natural species composition and increase individual tree sizes more rapidly.
• Prescribed burning to mimic wildfires.
• Selectively harvesting trees to create clearings and open gaps in the canopy.
• Extending rotation ages.
• Re-introducing wildlife flora and fauna known to be historically present but currently absent.
• Creating standing snags.
• Re-introducing of organic log structures to streams.
• Excluding horses.
• Managing of populations of herbivores, such as deer.
• Identifying and eliminate vectors for the introduction of exotic plants.
• Managing local fish populations.

The active application of silvicultural methods to restore old-growth forest conditions is controversial and still largely experimental (Trombulak 1996). The controversy centers on the contention that silvicultural management techniques do not produce the full array of old-growth characteristics and do not, therefore, result in old-growth (Leverett 1996). Therefore, until we improve our knowledge and predictive capabilities, Trombulak (1996) advises that active management for old-growth restoration should be limited to small fractions of an entire restoration project. The results should be monitored and analyzed and management should be altered on the basis of analysis (Trombulak 1996).