The tropical rainforests around the world are extremely diverse and support a huge number of timber tree species and have therefore been severely logged. One area that has produced, and still produces, large amounts of timber is Southeast Asia. In this region the most commercially important timber trees belong to the family dipterocarpacae, (dipterocarps). Logging is mostly carried out relatively unplanned and causes therefore great damage to the residual stand. Better planned logging and silvicultural activities, using (for instance) planned skid trails, directional felling and climber-cutting, should reduce the damage and create healthier residual stands. This study tested a logging method involving systematically aligned skid trails combined with directional felling, called supervised logging (SL) and compared it to the conventional logging (CL) practiced in the area. Both logging methods were combined with (CC) and without (NCC) climber cutting. All trees exceeding 10 cm in diameter at breast height (dbh), and a random selection of seedlings and saplings were measured before logging (1992) and for a period of eight years after logging (1993-2001). More trees tended (0.050 < P ≤ 0.100) to be logged where CL was applied than in SL plots (the mean numbers of all stems and dipterocarps logged per ha were 13.0 and 12.4, respectively, in CL plots, compared to 9.4 and 6.7 in SL plots). The skid trail network applied in SL resulted in disturbance to around 7 % of the soil cover. The corresponding figure for the unplanned skid trail network in CL was higher (ca. 10 %), but not significantly different. Climber cutting resulted in four more dipterocarp trees being logged ha-1, compared with NCC: a statistically significant difference (P ≤ 0.050). Basal area lost or severely damaged differed between methods for some diameter classes with mainly CL leading to greater losses. The residual stand contained statistically significantly more dipterocarp seedlings after CL than after SL, while saplings and trees showed the ...