A destructive breath
Maria. The name of the Virgin, yet so dear to this Catholic island, will not have brought him luck. Puerto Ricans are still traumatized from Hurricane Maria, the highest category 5, which hit their island in 2017, taking 3,000 lives. Trees, meanwhile, are still struggling to recover from the 250-mph winds that ripped off their foliage and, combined with flooding, wiped out 80 percent of their crops. In addition to the major damage to infrastructure (the electrical grid took a year to rebuild), the damage of the storm, the most intense the island has seen since 1928, on biodiversity is colossal. A 2018 study estimates that 30 million trees were felled by the winds in Puerto Rico. Insects, reptiles, birds and mammals have lost their bearings, their shelters as well as their food. While forests have an amazing propensity to regenerate, full recovery is expected to take several years, especially since this reset has benefited pests introduced to the island by humans, such as the iguana.
Beach for everyone
Since its election to government in 2016, renewed in 2020, the New Progressive Party has been engaged in a vast privatization campaign, leaving the door open to numerous investors. Public beaches are falling into their hands one by one, to be sown with hotel complexes, to the detriment of biodiversity. Two projects in particular have aroused the wrath of the locals: Ocean Park and Dorado Beach. However, where tennis courts now flourish, the leatherback turtle(Dermochelys coriacea), a vulnerable species, and the critically endangered hawksbill turtle(Eretmochelys imbricata) used to lay their eggs. This massive privatization of beaches gave rise to the movement Las playas son del pueblo (The beaches belong to the people). The victories are meager, but give hope to activists, as when in February 2022 a judge overturned the construction of a private condominium in Rincón.
The revolt of the ecologists
Like the movement against beach privatization, many others have flourished in Puerto Rico in recent decades. One of the leaders, Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera, even received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. He fought to save the Northeast Ecological Corridor, a nature reserve that is home to some 50 rare and endangered species, from development. In place of the marshes and mangroves, golf courses and other concrete resorts were to emerge, removing the area's status as a protected natural reserve. Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera combined a legal strategy with a search for public support, and finally obtained the reclassification of a large part of the area as a protected reserve.
In the same logic, the Museo Casa Pueblo was created in the heart of the Puerto Rican mountains in 1980, in protest to the government's desire to exploit 17 precious metal deposits and thus destroy 17 hectares of exceptional ecological wealth, while contaminating the drinking water. It took fifteen years of relentless struggle to get the government to comply. Since then, this community place continues to fight for the protection of the environment, while inviting citizens to get involved and participate in workshops on ecological awareness.Military cobayes
For a long time, Puerto Rico was used as a guinea pig for the U.S. military to test its military arsenal. The tests only stopped in 2003, but the territory still bears the scars of that period. The island of Vieques, in particular, was the victim of Agent Orange testing, a herbicide that the U.S. military used during the Vietnam War to clear the thick jungle in which the Vietcong were hiding. Twenty years after the tests were stopped, the inhabitants of the small island of Vieques still have a cancer rate three times higher than their fellow citizens, while the jungle, contaminated, has difficulty returning to its original form.
An island of biodiversity
Despite its small size limited by the Caribbean Sea, the island offers many ecosystems: tropical rainforest, tropical dry forest, mangroves, lagoons, rivers ... It has a particularly high number of endemic species. However, as is often the case on the islands, the diversity of species is quite limited. Thus, the only mammals native to the island are the bats. All the others, even the monkeys, have been introduced by Man!
Only, without natural predators, these introduced species quickly become a danger for the native species. For example, rats are a major threat to Monito's geckos(Sphaerodactylus micropithecus), a species that can only be found in two places in the world on the tiny island of Monito. When an attempt was made to count the number of individuals of this rare reptile in the 1980s, only 18 were counted. The Puerto Rican Amazon(Amazona vittata), a species of parrot, also endemic to the archipelago, is threatened by cats. Once very abundant, it is now on the list of critically endangered species, although it is the last parrot species on the island. It has already disappeared from Vieques and Mona islands, due to the destruction of its habitat. Biodiversity has, in fact, suffered from the deforestation that raged in the nineteenth century, to make way for crops. It is also measured on the sudden disappearance of insects: in 35 years, 80% of insects have disappeared from the canopy, and 98% on the ground.National parks: ecological jewels
Puerto Rico has 36 natural reserves and 19 national forests or parks. The most famous of these is undoubtedly the Bosque Nacional el Yunque, a virgin rainforest that, with 4 millionm3 of water per year, is very watered. This certainly explains its dense vegetation, which offers a refuge of choice for many species, some of which are endemic. One of them, the coquí frog (Eleutherodactylus coqui
), has even become the symbol of the island. , smaller and less visited, covers a similar ecosystem, with one difference: Puerto Rico's highest point, Cerro da Punta, lies between its borders. The great amplitude of relief, and the important hydrography (9 rivers cross the park) offer to the biodiversity a real paradise. Thus, forty resident plant species are endemic to the island, mainly orchids and ferns. Further north, the Bosque Estatal de Piñones is the largest mangrove system in the territory. The mangrove that covers 70% of the park is mainly made up of different species of mangroves, but there are also other ecosystems: beaches, reefs, sea grass beds, and even a bioluminescent lagoon!
