Forest management is considered to be the main measurement to maximize the benefit of forest commodity production, and the key method to increase carbon absorption to mitigat climate warming. It is also the effective way to regulate regional hydrological cycle, and the important supplement to achieve the goal of global biodiversity conservation besides the protected areas. However, the traditional forest management, which pursues a single production function, weakens other ecosystem functions and services, and has negative impacts on the forest landscape and biodiversity. More than 80% of the world's forests have different degrees of degradation due to human activities, and thus affects human well-beings. Therefore, it is necessary to transfer from traditional forest management to optimizing forest management. The optimizing forest management can promote multi-dimensional functions of ecological, economic, social and cultural aspects, and can achieve the "win-win" goals of wood production, biodiversity conservation, climate mitigation, hydrological regulation and other ecosystem functions. In this paper, we briefly reviewed the research progress on the ecological effects of forest management. At present, there are still many controversies about the ecological effects of forest management, or have not formed a clear understanding. Whether sustainable forest management can achieve additional climate benefits, and whether it can achieve climate mitigation goals, remains to be confirmed. How forest management impacts runoff and water quality in different regions has not been clearly recognized, which is an important issue worthy of in-depth and comprehensive analysis. Furthermore, the more or less intensity, and positive or negative impacts from different types of forest management on habitat and biodiversity are unclear. It is necessary to quantify the impacts of different management measurements on the forest animals, plants and microorganisms, and to maintain or improve biodiversity as an important goal of sustainable forest management. Therefore, how to optimize the forest management to obtain the maximum benefits is a research focus worthy of further exploration. In the future, it is necessary to quantify the effects of different forest management measurements on climate change mitigation, hydrological regulation, biodiversity conservation, and other ecosystem functions.