El Yunque National Forest

El Yunque National Forest (Spanish: Bosque Nacional El Yunque), most commonly known as El Yunque, is a tropical rainforest with cultural, historical, ecological, scientific, and recreational features in the Sierra de Luquillo mountain subrange in the northeast of the main island of Puerto Rico, managed by the U.S. Forest Service since 1903. Situated immediately outside the urban core of the San Juan metro area, within 40 km (25 mi) east of the Old San Juan historic quarter, Condado and Isla Verde resort areas, Hato Rey business center, and SJU airport, the forest is mostly concentrated in the municipalities of Río Grande, Luquillo, and Naguabo. In addition to being the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System, it is the easternmost, southernmost, wettest, and most biodiverse national forest in the U.S. Covering 28,516 acres (44.556 mi2) of the Sierra de Luquillo mountain subrange, El Yunque is geologically composed primarily of volcaniclastic rocks, mostly basalt and andesite fragments, with significant igneous intrusions of quartz diorite on its the south-central part, all formed underwater during the Early to Late Cretaceous epochs. It has 8 peaks reaching more than 900 m (2,953 ft), of which 5 exceed more than 1,000 m (3,280 ft), including the El Toro, El Yunque, and Los Picachos peaks. It is the source of 10 rivers and 7 watersheds fed by 3,860 mm (152 in) of yearly average rainfall, mostly drained by the Blanco, Espíritu Santo, Loíza, and Mameyes rivers. It has six distinct forest types, namely the gallery forests along waterways, the secondary and tabonuco lowland forests, the palo colorado and palma de sierra mid-elevation forests, and the roblecillo and guayabota cloud forests. These are habitat to 164 vertebrate species and more than 1,000 tree and plant species. With about 1.2 million visitors annually, El Yunque is equipped with the El Portal de El Yunque visitor and exhibition center, and the Caimitillo, Palma de Sierra, Puente Roto, Quebrada Grande, and Río Sabana picnic and recreational areas. It has 13 hiking trails of varying difficulty covering about 31 km (19 mi), including the La Coca, Big Tree, La Mina, El Yunque, Mt. Britton, and Trade Winds trails. These not only lead to open-access ponds, streams, and/or waterfalls, some of which feature boulders with pre-Columbian petroglyphs made by the Taíno, who revered the forest as a spiritual site, but they also end at observation towers and platforms on summits, which, depending on cloud cover, offer panoramic views of not only the forest and the mountain subrange, but also of nearby municipalities from Bayamón and San Juan in the west to Vieques and Culebra in the east. The highest visitor parking areas in the forest are near Mt. Britton trail at an elevation of about 760 m (2,493 ft). El Yunque is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, an area protected to demonstrate the values of conservation, operating as an experimental forest under the Luquillo Experimental Forest, which provides scientific research on climate, geology, soils, water resources, flora, fauna, and ecology. Among its investigation stations is the Iguaca Aviary, dedicated to the preservation of the Puerto Rican parrot, a critically endangered species. Additionally, specific areas within the forest are further protected for their scientific, ecological, recreational, and/or scenic value, including the El Toro Wilderness, Baño de Oro Research Natural Area, and Icacos Wild and Scenic River.

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