the new balsa trees grow

There is no such thing as entire forests of balsa trees. They grow singly or in very small, widely scattered groups in the jungle. For hundreds of years, balsa was actually considered a weed tree. They reproduce by growing hundreds of long seed pods, which eventually open up and, with the help of the wind, scatter thousands of new seeds over a large area of the jungle. Each seed is airborne on its own small wisp of down, similar to the way dandelion seeds spread.
The seeds eventually fall to the ground and are covered by the litter of the jungle. There they lay and accumulate until one day there is an opening in the jungle canopy large enough for the sun's rays to strike the jungle floor and start the seeds growing. Wherever there is an opening, made either by a farmer or by another tree dying, balsa will spring up as thick as grass. A farmer is often hard put to keep his food plot clear of balsa. As the new balsa trees grow, the strongest will become predominate and the weaker trees will die. By the time they are mature, there may be only one or two basa trees to an acre of jungle.
HOW ARE BALSA TREES HARVESTED? While nature intended the balsa tree to be a short lived nursemaid, mankind eventually discovered that it was an extremely useful resource. The real start of the balsa business was during World War I, when the allies were in need of a plentiful substitute for cork. The only draw back to using balsa was, and still is, the back breaking work that is necessary to get it out of the jungle.
Because of the way the individual balsa trees are scattered throughout the jungles, it has never been possible to use mass production logging procedures and equipment. The best way to log balsa trees is to go back to the methods of Paul Bunyan - chop them down with an axe, haul them to the nearest river by ox team, tie them together into rafts, and then float the raft of balsa logs down the river to the saw mill.
Article resource: http://www.balsafactory.com/