In this paper we present a case study from northeastern Alberta, Canada. Our objective is to demonstrate a fundamentally different approach to forest management in which stakeholders weigh current management options in terms of their long-term effects on the forest in order to balance conservation and economic objectives. We use ALCES®, a landscape-scale simulation model, to quantify the effects of the current regulatory framework and typical industrial practices on a suite of ecological and economic indicators over the next 100 years. Our simulations suggest that if current practices continue, the combined activities of the energy and forestry industries in our 59,000 km2 study area will cause the density of human-origin edge to increase from 1.8 km/km2 to a maximum of 8.0 km/km2. We also predict that older age classes of merchantable forest stands will be largely eliminated from the landscape, habitat availability for woodland caribou will decline from 43% to 6%, and there will be a progressive shortfall in the supply of softwood timber, beginning in approximately 60 years. Additional simulations involving a suite of “best practices” demonstrated that substantial improvements in ecological outcome measures can be achieved, while maintaining a sustainable flow of economic benefits, through alternative management scenarios. We discuss the merits of our proposed approach to land-use planning, with application to the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.