Conflicts over changing demands on our increasingly scarce stands of late successional ponderosa pine could be abated by increasing the proportion of stands with late successional attributes in the forest land base. However, we don't know whether these attributes can be developed through the management of younger stands. Nor do we know whether late successional stands can be managed to perpetuate these values through time. To answer these questions, two long-term large-scale studies were begun to study ecosystem responses to a series of silvicultural treatments that include timber harvest and prescribed fire. In one study, treatments are designed to test several pathways toward late successional forest attributes in a young, even-aged stand. In the other study a treatment is aimed at sustaining an existing late successional stand and contrasting the response of that ecosystem with that of a young, even-aged stand. Although not yet completely installed, the stand structure in one treatment resembles two late successional stands with periodic fire.