Complex early seral forests (CESFs) occupy potentially forested sites after a stand-replacement disturbance and before re-establishment of a closed-forest canopy. Such young forests contain numbers and kinds of biological legacies missing from those produced by commercial forestry operations. In the Sierra Nevada of California, CESFs are most often produced by mixed-severity fires, which include landscape patches burned at high severity. These forests support diverse plant and wildlife communities rarely found elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada. Severe fires are, therefore, essential to the region's ecological integrity. Ecologically detrimental management of CESFs, or unburned forests that may become CESF's following fire, is degrading the region's globally outstanding qualities. Unlike old-growth forests. CESFs have received little attention in conservation and reserve management. Thus, we describe important ecological attributes of CESFs and distinguish them from early serai conditions created by logging. We recommend eight best management practices in CESFs for achieving ecological integrity on federal lands in the mixed-conifer region of the Sierra Nevada.