" The means of livelihood in those days depends in the abundance of a virgin forest can offer, a God given bounty.....a privilege....and lucky are those who happens to live in it and co-exist with other living things that dwells in it along with the blue seas and deep green mountains......!! " The fallen lauan tree is ready to be de-limbed and bucked to certain lengths to be placed in an awaiting logging truck. From there, it will have a long haul to the millsite miles away. Welcome to a typical tropical virgin forest, abundant in wildlife, giant hardwood trees and vegetation… a vast natural resource, all needed by man to survive.
Nearby, the mighty, roaring machines of bulldozers, graders, wheeldozers and dumptrucks continue to build roads and bridges. These are made of sturdy timber, and the crushed gravel and limestone which are readily available from nearby small quarries. These machines grind away, deeper into the lush forests, creating access for all sorts of logging equipments. Not far from where they have felled that giant tree, on top of a hill where the land has already been cleared, lays the gigantic portable tower. The mammoth tower, on its firm and stable stand, is gracefully skylining from the lower elevations, bringing up logs to the clearing. Along the moderate terrain but still filled with standing timber, comes a skidder out of the forest, dragging a cluster of smaller trees to the clearing. logs in the forest logging truck - the king of the hauling roads ! From the vantage point, you will see a 180 degree view of the surrounding hills where similar operations are taking place, where only a straight tree trunk is being used as the anchor for draglines. At highnoon, the seemingly never ending noises of those machines start to die down, one by one until you will hear nothing except the rushing water of a nearby waterfall or stream and the chirping of the steadfast birds who refuse to go away. You may hear the workers getting ready for their well deserved lunch. They will break at site or at a nearby campsite where they await food prepared by their cook on a tapang
Meanwhile, approximately, a hundred miles away, in the millsite of Paper Industries Corp. of the Phils.(PICOP), formerly known as Bislig Bay Lumber Co., Inc. (BBLCI) logging trucks come and go from the forests. Giant wheel loaders, popularly known as the “timberjacks”, unload the logs from the trucks and lay them side by side in an open yard, ready for sorting, scaling and grading. The sawlogs will be brought to the sawmill for lumber production, and later to be kiln dried and finished for the local and international market. The peeler and nice round logs are soaked in a booming pond; they are getting ready for veneering and plywood manufacturing. The smaller logs, sometimes called the Pulp logs, are brought to the chipper for pulp and paper making, while the much better looking, longer and straight logs may be stored in the sea pond by the shoreline ready for export to the neighbouring Asian countries……and……
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