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Protecting the climate system requires urgently reducing carbon emissions to the atmosphere and increasing cumulative carbon stocks in natural systems. Recent studies confirm that large trees accumulate and store a disproportionate share of aboveground forest carbon. In the temperate forests of the western United States, a century of intensive logging drastically reduced large‐trees and older forest, but some large trees remain. However, recent changes to large tree management policy on National Forest lands east of the Cascade Mountains crest in Oregon and southeastern Washington allows increased harvesting of large‐diameter trees (≥53 cm or 21 inches) that account for just 3% of all stems, but hold 42% of total aboveground carbon. In this article, we describe synergies with protecting large trees for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and forest resilience goals to shift species composition, reduce fuel loads and stem density, and adapt to climatically driven increases in fire activity in eastern Oregon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests are critical to the planetary operational system and evolved without human management for millions of years in North America. Actively managing forests to help them adapt to a changing climate and disturbance regime has become a major focus in the United States. Aside from a subset of forests wherein wood production, human safety, and experimental research are primary goals, we argue that expensive management interventions are often unnecessary, have uncertain benefits, or are detrimental to many forest attributes such as resilience, carbon accumulation, structural complexity, and genetic and biological diversity. Natural forests (i.e., those protected and largely free from human management) tend to develop greater complexity, carbon storage, and tree diversity over time than forests that are actively managed; and natural forests often become less susceptible to future insect attacks and fire following these disturbances. Natural forest stewardship is therefore a critical and cost effective strategy in forest climate adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]