How Long Will It Take for El Yunque Rain Forest to Come Alive Again After Hurricaibe
Another Victim of Hurricane Maria: Puerto Rico's Treasured Rainforest
LUQUILLO, P.R. — When you looked up, y'all could once see cipher but the lush, emerald canopy of tabonuco and sierra palm trees roofing El Yunque National Woods.
That was before Hurricane Maria obliterated the but tropical rain forest in the United States forest organization. Left behind was a scene so bare that on a recent visit, it was possible to see the concrete skyline of San Juan about xxx miles west — a previously unimaginable sight.
El Yunque, pronounced Jun-kay, has been an enormous source of pride in Puerto Rico and one of the master drivers of the island's tourism manufacture. The 28,000-acre forest on the eastern part of the isle has over 240 species of trees; 23 of those are institute nowhere else. Over 50 bird species live among the forest's crags and waterfalls.
But sunlight now reaches cavities of the forest that have not felt a ray of light in decades, bringing with it a scorching heat.
"Hurricane Maria was like a shock to the organization," said Grizelle González, a project leader at the International Institute of Tropical Forestry, function of United states of america Department of Agriculture. "The whole wood is completely defoliated."
The hardest hit areas at the pinnacle of the forest "might take a century to recover," Ms. González, who has worked at El Yunque for 17 years, said.
Tree trunks that even so stood were left brown, stripped of their leaves and night-green mosses. Landslides accept scattered the forest with mounds of displaced soil and boulders.
The billions of gallons of water that rain every year on the viii major rivers that originate here supply twenty percent of the beverage water in Puerto Rico.
"What'south going to happen if the ecosystem has less capacity to capture that water, get it into the streams, and into the municipal h2o systems?" Sharon Wallace, the forest supervisor for El Yunque, said.
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Bryophytes, mosses that grow on tree trunks, collect a lot of the h2o that goes down the mountain, Ms. Gónzalez said. But trees were stripped of the mosses, especially on the confront that received the straight fury of Maria's winds.
The bird population also suffered a devastating hit. Birds are typically afflicted after hurricanes ravage trees of the food they swallow. But on an initial scouting trip to the attainable parts of the forest, Ms. Gónzalez said she saw the bodies of dozens of blackbirds and pearly-eyed thrashers that had died because of the hurricane's galloping gusts.
The livelihood of the Puerto Rican parrot, an endangered species living in El Yunque and Río Abajo Land Woods, is of special concern. The colorful bright-green bird with a distinctive cherry-red stripe higher up its beak is found only in Puerto Rico and is the only native parrot species in the United states of america.
"The Puerto Rican parrot is an iconic species of the island," Marisel López, leader of the The Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program, of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, said. "Information technology'south our legacy."
While there were tens of thousands in pre-Columbian times, the parrot population dwindled to thirteen by 1973 because of deforestation, hunting and species competition. Conservation efforts since then take helped rebuild the population, and before Maria, the convict and wild population combined numbered over 500, Ms. López said. At least seven parrots died in captivity because of the stress induced by the hurricane and the high heat in the days after considering of the lack of canopy, she said.
Ms. López, whose team is trying to gain access to the western part of El Yunque where the parrots live, said the price in the wild population was not known.
The tourism industry in Puerto Rico is deeply intertwined with its environment.
About 1.two million people visit El Yunque every yr for its hiking trails, zip-lining, camping and waterfalls. Merely the rain forest has remained airtight since Maria left roads inaccessible and all its recreational facilities received blows, Ms. Wallace, the forest supervisor, said.
"Nosotros don't know how long it is going to take to reopen," she said.
And on an island, where 58 percent of the acreage is forests, Maria'southward ecological damage was widespread.
The population of mountain coquí, one of the 14 species of a small native frog, with a distinctive mating call heard at night across the island, was severely decimated by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, Rafael Joglar, a professor of biology at the Academy of Puerto Rico, said.
Hurricane Maria could be the final straw for that species, Mr. Joglar said.
"It worries u.s.a. that it'll be the next species to disappear in Puerto Rico," Mr. Joglar, a herpetologist, said. "The worst would be if nosotros go a dry season — that would be the mortal blow other than the hurricane."
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Over a 1000000 bats, encompassing 13 dissimilar species, telephone call Puerto Rico their home, Allen Kurta, a professor of biological science at Eastern Michigan Academy, said.
A majority of the bats in Puerto Rico live in caves and probably weathered the storm better than those that roost in trees, he said.
Beside direct bloodshed from hurricane winds, bat and bird populations volition exist faced with the daunting task of finding new tree habitats and scavenging for food.
"Nectar feeders and fruit eaters are going to accept a very hard time because all the major fruit and nectar copse are downward," said Mr. Kurta, who has studied bats for 40 years.
As bat populations recover, they volition play a crucial role in pollinating and dispersing seeds that volition assist Puerto Rican forests recover.
Some experts say the island'southward environment volition recover and eventually flourish.
Hurricanes are part of Puerto Rico, natural cleansers of the tropical ecosystem, scientists say. Nature's mechanisms will boot in, they say, and spark the forest'south natural recuperation just equally they did afterward Hurricane San Ciprian in 1932 and Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
"Plainly in that location'due south a negative immediate consequence," a wild fauna biologist, Jafet Vélez, said. "Only we know by feel that, long-term, this will cause a rejuvenation in the vegetation of the woods that will benefit all the species that reside there."
New lord's day exposure volition spark a rebirth of latent plant species in the forest's thicket that once stopped growing because of dumbo canopies that blocked sunlight, Mr. Vélez said. Some species might overtake others, changing the ecological composition. And leaves brought to the ground, Ms. Gónzalez said, could brainstorm to deed every bit a fertilizer that will help plants recuperate.
"The flora and fauna in Puerto Rico, the biodiversity, has adapted to piece of work through hurricanes," Mr. Joglar said.
For now, it is a matter of how long it will take for nature to accept its class after beingness battered by the deadliest hurricane in Puerto Rico's modern history.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/another-victim-of-hurricane-maria-puerto-ricos-treasured-rainforest.html
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