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The trucks leaving the individual logging yards were taking their logs to a central log yard that is inside the trees to the left of the landing on the river in the center of this photograph. There is there a huge pile of many species of logs - 81 species to be exact - brought from many different parts of the forest. In any given square mile of the forest there were generally cut only 1 or 2 (or none) of a given species of tree (owing to the fact that in general, tropical species-rich forests tend to have relatively low densities of adults of any one species in any one area). By pooling logs from many different sites, gradually large numbers of logs of each species accumulate at the central log yard. These logs are then dragged to the river and loaded into rafts, with each layer in the raft being made up of only 1-2 species of logs. A layer is placed in the water, and then a second layer put on top (which pushes the first layer under water), and then another layer is put on top of that, etc. Detailed records are kept of exactly which logs are where. Then, the multilayered log raft was pushed out into the stream of the river and goes down stream (I can no longer remember if the raft moved entirely with the water current or with that and some nudging by boats). This photograph was taken from the front yard of the house of the supervisor of this operation.
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