- Location
- Puerto Rico
- Current protection
- El Yunque National Forest and El Toro Wilderness (U.S. Forest Service), a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve
- Status
- No active campaign
- Tier
- Tier 2 · National Monument
- In the book
- Not featured in Undiscovered America
Why should it be a National Park?
El Yunque is the only tropical rainforest the federal government owns, and the whole of it would fit inside the parking lots of some western parks. Twenty-eight thousand acres on the Luquillo Mountains catch as much as twenty feet of rain a year, which is enough water to build four distinct forests stacked on top of each other, ending in a wind-flattened dwarf forest of mossy, knee-high trees on the summits. It is loud in a way no mainland forest is. The coquí, a frog the size of a thumbnail, sings all night in numbers that turn the hillsides into one continuous sound. Above it flies the Puerto Rican parrot, which fell to thirteen birds in the wild in 1975 and survives now only because of work done inside this forest. Neither species lives anywhere else on earth.
The case is straightforward. No unit of the National Park System protects a tropical rainforest, this one sits a short drive from a city of two million and an international airport, and Puerto Rico, with more people than twenty states, has no National Park at all. The obstacle is interagency rather than substantive: the forest is already federal, and the Forest Service has never been eager to give up the only tropical rainforest it holds.
The history of National Park Campaigns
El Yunque is the oldest protected forest under the American flag, and most of the fights over it have been about wilderness and names, but in the 1930s the question was whether it should be a National Park. In 1934, Park Service biologists reported that it met the highest National Park standards, and a bill for a Luquillo National Park was introduced in 1936; the Forest Service opposed it, and the forest stayed with that agency.
- Distinct National Park attempts
- 1 (1934–1946, including the April 29, 1936 Luquillo National Park bill).
- Other designation attempts
- 2 (biosphere reserve 1976; wilderness 2005).
Sources
- U.S. Forest Service, El Yunque National Forest: history and land management pages
- Caribbean National Forest Wilderness Act of 2005
- UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme, Luquillo Biosphere Reserve
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program
- National Park Service, Suggested Areas Resumes (1957)
- 1876
The Spanish Crown sets aside the Luquillo forest, one of the first forest reserves in the Western Hemisphere.
- January 17, 1903
President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims the Luquillo Forest Reserve, five years after the United States takes Puerto Rico.
- 1930s
The reserve is renamed the Caribbean National Forest. The Civilian Conservation Corps builds the roads, trails, and recreation areas still in use.
- 1934
Park Service biologists H. C. Bryant and George M. Wright find it meets the highest National Park standards but is well run by the Forest Service.
- April 29, 1936
Legislation to establish Luquillo National Park is introduced; the Forest Service strongly opposes it.
- 1938
The Interior Secretary proposes trading Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration lands for the forest; nothing comes of it.
- Since the 1940s
No park bill has been introduced since the Luquillo proposals of 1934 to 1946.
- 1976
UNESCO names the forest a Biosphere Reserve.
- December 2005
Congress designates the El Toro Wilderness, roughly 10,000 acres, the first tropical wilderness in the National Wilderness Preservation System.
- 2007
The Caribbean National Forest is renamed El Yunque National Forest, restoring the name islanders had always used.
- September 20, 2017
Hurricane Maria strips the canopy and destroys much of the trail and road system. The forest closes, and recovery runs for years.