Why do we want old growth forests over harvestable forests? Is there an ecological advantage
The 'Timber Wars' podcast was a six part story on the Pacific Northwest, including a lot of the history of the science on logging and forest health, as it evolved from the eighties through to today.
Maximizing ecological advantage also maximizes economic advantage, even in the short-medium term.
I don't see how this is supposed to be accomplished. For that concept to make any sense, you'd need to prevent the tree loss from non-human activity, which is all but impossible to do.
If you can't do that, then the existing pattern of loss already looks like "loss from non-human activity", and any logging you do will look like "a lot more loss than typical of non-human activity".
Peter Wohlleben has written about this approach. The Menominee tribe also practices a similar method; they only log sick or weak trees. However, because these are from old growth forests, the wood quality is superior to that of trees from monoculture forests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wohlleben
https://e360.yale.edu/features/menominee-forest-management-l...