El Portal del Yunque.

Two hours southeast of Miami, by air, out past Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic the U.S. Forest Service is undertaking what federal officials are calling a "partnership with the tropics"-an attempt to insure a future for the world's shrinking rainforests.

Little known to most Americans, Puerto Rico's Caribbean National Forest is the only tropical ecosystem in our National Forest system. Last spring, U.S Forest Service Chief Dale Robertson visited the island commonwealth to commemorate memorate the 50th anniversary of Puerto Rico's Tropical Forest Experiment Station, the research unit of the Caribbean National Forest and the oldest research effort in the hemisphere aimed at tropical rainforest management.

Robertson his new forest supervisor, and other local officials were kicking off an effort to achieve a multimillion dollar infusion of money for the Caribbean Forest. The funds will fuel a newly amended forest plan with a remarkable emphasis on recreation and research. New research facilities will be built at the Institute of Tropical Forestry at the Caribbean National Forest, and expanded recreational and interpretive facilities will tell the Forest's one million annual visitors how to use, and not lose, the world's precious tropical forests.

The key to the goals of the new forest plan is an expansion project called El Portal del Yunque. " El Yunque, meaning "the anvil" in Spanish, is the name and shape of the Forest's second highest peak, the outstanding feature in the Caribbean Forest's single 28,000-acre ranger district. The research and recreational complex as a whole will be called "El Portal del Yunque," or "the gateway" to El Yunque.

The reason for building El Portal, says the Forest's former acting supervisor and district ranger Dan Nolan, is to forge an "international management model for tropical forests." If Congress follows up its 1990 appropriation of $400,000 for design costs, the complex will contain a "world-class" visitor center and new facilities for recreation, education, research, and the recovery of endangered species.

It's difficult to imagine a site better suited to initiate an international effort at rainforest recovery. In Puerto Rico, more than 80 percent of the and was deforested before efforts began to restore the countryside.

In 1876, the core of the present Forest was established as a nature preserve-one of the first in this hemisphere-by the Spanish Crown. The Forest contains more vegetative diversity per acre than any other U.S.National Forest. Rare tree species number 88, again more than any other National Forest. At the higher elevations, where up to 240 inches of rain fall annually on the 3,500-foot summits, the often mist-shrouded forest is the same as it was when Europeans first landed on the island 500 years ago.

But the pristine character of those virgin forests is not the reason El Yunque stands out, either as a location for research or as a destination for visitors. Actually, most of the Caribbean National Forest-like some of its native fauna-has come back from near extinction. El Yunque's recovery is what makes it an ideal case study for a world where rainforests are vanishing at the astounding rate of 100 acres a minute.

The Caribbean National Forest has been both resurrected and preserved in a Third World environment much like the rest of the tropics. Though a longtime U.S. commonwealth, Puerto Rico's rise to a technology-driven economy and relative wealth has been recent. Unemployment is still 14 percent and the per capita income only $5,000.

Puerto Rico's population density adds an impetus to deforestation. Were the mainland as crowded as Puerto Rico, the population of the entire world would live in the continental United States ! Add to that the fact that 60 percent of the world's population lives in the tropics, and, Chief Robertson says, "You realize the kind of pressure being placed on tropical forests. Those people have to survive; they live off those forests."

Forest Service land-acquisition efforts in Puerto Rico started in 1931, and since that time more than 10,000 acres of farmland-about one-third of the former forest-has been reforested. Complementing that, a largely unsung tropical forestry research program has set the stage for the U.S. agency to become a hemispheric teacher on the topic of tropical-forest management.

A sizable sector of that audience is beating a path to El Yunque. To date, more than 50 million people have visited the Caribbean National Forest. "In many ways we're really an urban forest," an says. From the summit of El Yunque, resort hotels can be seen lining the distant edge of the pastel Caribbean, and urban sprawl attests to the fact that two million people live within a 20-minute drive.

Most people would not think of a Caribbean cruise ship as a likely springboard for a visit to a National Forest. But that is the ironic reality of El Yunque. San Juan is second only to Miami as the busiest port in the Caribbean. More than a quarter of the 600,000 people who reach Puerto Rico by ship tour the Caribbean Forest.

The result of all this international tourism is "an opportunity to reach a worldwide audience, far different from a typical National Forest," Dan Nolan says. In addition to the German hikers you may meet on Mount Britton, a popular peak, visitors include tropical forest managers from other countries who come for hands-on experience.

The effort to expand El Yunque's recreational and research facilities could not come at a better time. Since 1973, recreational facilities in the Forest have grown only 5 percent while the island's population has climbed 20 percent and tourism has surged 33 percent.

Highway 191 is the main access road, and recreational sites along the highway are deluged. Nearly all the use is concentrated in 1,500 acres bordering Puerto Rico 191. Where a side road crosses a stream that is popular for wading and picnicking, cars are double parked on the roadside for hundreds of yards.

Formal facilities for the public are ancient. In fact, El Yunque is a monument to the impact of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Most of the trails and observation points, and even Highway 191, were CCC projects-and they have seen better days.

The major roadside recreational sites include two interpretive trails, the tiny Sierra Palm visitor center, a "restaurante puertorriqueno" reached by trail, La Coca Falls, and Yokahu Lookout Tower, named after the supreme being of the Taino Indians. One of three CCC observation towers, Yokahu looks like a Scottish castle perched on a tropical headland.

Only hikers reach El Yunque peak. A road to the summit is off limits to private vehicles because the mountaintop bristles with government communications antennas. From the point where the side road to the peak turns off, and is gated against cars, Highway 191 is also closed to further traffic. The road's spectacular traverse of the Forest, surely one of the most scenic drives in any National Forest, was blocked by a landslide in 1970 and never reopened. Dan Nolan hopes the road, a candidate for National Scenic Byways status, will be back in use by 1992.

Trails encircle the area of El Yunque Peak, linking Highway 191 to the summit, the nearby Mount Britton tower, and another crag topped by CCC-built steps and a viewing platform. Some of these paths have impressive culvert systems, rock walls, and paving to shed the torrential rains. "Climate really takes a toll on facilities here," Nolan says.

In addition to a new visitor center and 11 interpretive stations planned as part of the El Portal project, the just-released forest plan calls for construction of the Forest's first campground, new picnic areas, the renovation of existing recreational sites, improvements to 26 miles of trails, and construction of eight miles of new paths. Some of these efforts are attempts to disperse use away from the crowded corridor of Highway 191.

Perhaps the biggest recreational challenge has already been met. The high crime rate of years past has been eradicated with the help of local police. The dark side of El Yunque-portrayed in the NBC miniseries, "Glitz," which depicted a murder in the rainforest-is now a thing of the past.

In addition to a recreational emphasis, the new forest plan is a striking departure from the plans in place at more typical National Forests. In 1986, the initial forest plan contained a proposal to introduce commercial timber harvesting to El Yunque on nearly 3,000 acres of land, with another 6,10 00 acres deemed "suitable" for timber harvesting. The proposal for logging, so commonplace in other National Forests, raised such an uproar that it was eliminated from the final plan.

The Forest Service also raised its recommendation for designation of wilderness from 5,000 to 10,000 acres.

All this is not just preservation for preservation's sake. It goes hand in hand with an emphasis on research, a focus that is far from new at the Caribbean Forest.

Theodore Roosevelt established the Loquillo Forest Reserve in 1903, and the Tropical Forest Experiment Station was created in 1939 to set guidelines in the uncharted task of managing a tropical forest. Between 1943 and 1956, research took primacy when the Forest Reserve and the research station were combined and then designated the Loquillo Experimental Forest. The name was changed to the Caribbean National Forest in 1973.

In 1968, formal efforts were begun to save the Puerto Rican parrot, one of two endangered species in the Forest.

After five decades, the Forest is uniquely suited for demonstrating lessons in rainforest management in ways particularly relevant to the Third World. Thousands of acres of farmland have been reclaimed with methods that slowly phased out farming. Because of substantial logging operations during World War II and the subsequent acquisition of thousands of acres of cleared land, the Forest's managers have had the opportunity to establish plantation methods of reforestation.

Virtually any aspect of tropical forestry that might be needed in a developing country has been tested on the Caribbean National Forest. Current studies include research into tropical watershed dynamics, stream flow, and sedimentation. The small amount of timber harvesting allowed under the current plan, about 200 acres over the next 10 years, are geared to mesh with the watershed research.

During the past four decades, foreign students and foresters have been frequent visitors. The Agency for International Development has sponsored 16 three-month short courses on tropical forestry. The new plan for the Forest is intended to formalize that mission with an unprecedented effort to reach potential practitioners, including training for outbound Peace Corps volunteers.

In 1963, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that less than 3 percent of the world's tropical forests were subject to any kind of planned management. It is unlikely, say Forest Service officials, that any significant change has occurred since the 60s. That fact and the trend toward an international approach to the environment seem to be targeting a U.S. National Forest for an important role in saving the world's rainforests.

Will the El Portal project really get off the ground? The head of the Forest Service replies, "I certainly hope so." Robertson goes on to explain that the project only has design money at this point. "We'll have to go back to Congress for the construction phase."

Robertson is solidly behind the project. "When you get beyond just talking about deforestation and the greenhouse effect, " he says, "you realize that this Institute of Tropical Forestry project is as close as we come to a solution. For that reason, El Portal del Yunque is among the top few most important Forest Service projects in the nation."

Hugo Blasts El Yunque

Hurriicane Hugo pounded his hammer against El Yunque's anvil in mid-September, dealing a devastating blow to the forests there. As we were preparing this magazine for the press, the first communications from Puerto Rico, based on aerial photos, revealed that 22,000 of the Caribbean National Forest's 28,000 acres had been extensively damaged. Ten hours of sustained hurricane-force wind caused windthrow, windshear, and defoliation. Study plantations of teak and kadam, a fast-growing tropical species, were leveled. At this writing, all roads in the Forest are blocked.