Puerto Rico Controversy : Logging May Harm Endangered Species

A plan to permit commercial logging in about one-fifth of the U.S. national forest system’s only tropical rain forest has run into opposition from environmentalists.

The Puerto Rican parrot makes its home in the Caribbean National Forest and even small-scale logging there might destroy the only habitat of the endangered species, said Cindy Gines, spokeswoman for a coalition of eight environmental groups, which include the Audubon Society and the Natural History Society of Puerto Rico.

Only about 30 of the birds remain at El Yunque, as the forest 20 miles southeast of San Juan is commonly known.

The foot-high, deep green bird with the splash of red above the beak is among the few parrots native to the United States.

‘Serious Damage’ Seen

“It is unknown what effect logging will have on wildlife, water quality, erosion, recreation and tourism,” Gines said. She added that logging could cause “serious environmental damage that we find unacceptable.”

U.S. Forest Service researchers, who have approved the plan, dispute the environmentalists’ contentions and maintain that logging can have long-run benefits.

Other opponents to logging include the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon of Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Commonwealth’s delegate to Congress, Jaime Fuster.

The U.S. Forest Service’s inch-thick, 50-year management plan for El Yunque proposes that commercial logging be allowed on 5,800 acres of the 27,000-acre rain forest over the next half-century.

The plan, published last year after nine years of preparation, would limit the harvest to no more than about 200 acres a year, mostly of mahogany and the native hardwoods Tabonuco and Ausubo.

The purpose, in addition to raising revenue for El Yunque, is to develop knowledge that might be useful to countries like Brazil and Ecuador, which have allowed commercial logging in their own tropical rain forests to proceed virtually unchecked.

Need Stable Environment

“The only place you can test this is a place where you have a stable, controlled environment,” said Frank Wadsworth, a U.S. Forest Service researcher who has roamed El Yunque for 46 years and who helped draft the logging plan.

“If we can find out how well it works, how productive it will be, we can give (other countries) an alternative,” he said.

The coalition of environmental groups doesn’t entirely oppose the plan, Gines said, but would like to see it scaled down. El Yunque has been protected since the days when Spain ruled this 3,200-square-mile Caribbean island, she said, and logging could result in widespread ecological damage.

“When you’ve got a resource as valuable as El Yunque, you should take a more conservative attitude.”

Wadsworth, who helped get the Puerto Rican parrot declared an endangered species, disagrees.

He said logging is conducted in almost every U.S. national forest and that every one of the 5,800 acres that would be logged at El Yunque has been farmed or logged before.

Not Virgin Forest

None of the 5,800 acres is virgin forest, he said, and none is near the known habitat of the Puerto Rican parrot.