Harvesting trees, including creating or maintaining roads, causes physical alterations that can increase sediment and nutrients delivered to streams, which may negatively affect aquatic organisms, including plants, fish, and macroinvertebrates (i.e., immature insects, crustaceans, mollusks, etc.). However, forestry best management practices (BMPs), including riparian buffers (i.e., Streamside Management Zones (SMZ)) greatly reduce or eliminate sediment delivery to streams. Additionally, SMZs also regulate stream temperature, stream flow, and nutrient levels. However, knowledge gaps remain in understanding the effectiveness of SMZs in protecting aquatic organisms. We evaluated the ecological integrity of streams by conducting physical assessments and analyzing aquatic macroinvertebrate communities at 24 SMZ sites within the Piedmont and Coastal Plain ecoregions in Georgia. We compared our results to reference sites drawn from a database that matches the study’s protocol and ecoregion to assess SMZs' effectiveness in conserving streams' ecological integrity. Our project will help inform forest managers of SMZ effectiveness in limiting ecological effects of timber harvesting on stream ecosystems and identify potential shortcomings of this standard forestry practice.