Puerto Rican Parrot

Decline and Recovery of the Puerto Rican Parrot.

Historically described as having been abundant throughout Puerto Rico’s forests, the Puerto Rican Parrot declined precipitously during the 1900s and reached its all-time low in 1975 when a single flock of thirteen birds persisted in the Luquillo Mountains.  That flock inhabited a small, remote area within El Yunque National Forest, and became the core of a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) recovery program.

FWS established a captive breeding facility at El Yunque and released birds locally to rebuild the wild population.  Efforts to restore the El Yunque flock have had mixed results: periods of slow growth punctuated by sharp losses to hurricanes.  In 1989, Hurricane Hugo cut the wild population roughly in half, from about 47 to 23.  Over the years, numbers at El Yunque fluctuated in the range of 20 to 60, with all known recruitment coming from the captive-bred stock.

In 2006, FWS began to establish a second free-flying flock 70 miles west at Río Abajo State Forest to reduce the species’ vulnerability to catastrophic events.  At Río Abajo, the parrots have fared better than at El Yunque, nesting naturally and showing signs of potential to become a self-sustaining population.  With hopes of establishing a third population, FWS began releasing birds at Maricao State Forest in 2016, but thus far those releases have not succeeded.

In August 2017, before Hurricane María, the wild-living population was approximately 200 birds, with about 55 at El Yunque, 140 at Río Abajo, and three at Maricao.  Following Hurricane María’s devastation of eastern Puerto Rico, the status of the species at El Yunque is uncertain, except that it includes revival of the captive breeding program.  The hurricane had a much lighter impact on the forest at Río Abajo, and it appears that both the captive and wild flocks survived largely intact.