The United States is once again about to prove that it has no
moral authority to advise other nations on the protection of
tropical rainforests.
At the urging of the Federal Highway Administration and the
Puerto Rico Department of Transportation, the U.S. Forest Service
is proposing to resurrect a road project that would cut through
the heart of the national forest system's only tropical
rainforest, the Caribbean, known locally as El Yunque. Scientists
have called El Yunque "a priceless and unexplored reservoir of
biological diversity." Environmentalists fear the road project
will cause irreparable ecological damage and create a management
nightmare for the Forest Service.
The plan calls for the re-opening of a portion of Puerto Rico
Highway 191 which traverses the center of the mountainous,
28,000-acre national forest. The southern half of 191, which was
built on geologically unstable soils, has been closed for two
decades due to landslides. The result has been gaping ravines,
mass erosion, and watershed degradation. Reconstruction not only
would perpetuate this geological folly, but could directly
threaten the recovery of one of the world's most endangered birds,
the Puerto Rican Parrot, object of one of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service's most intensive recovery efforts to date.
For twenty years the area surrounding the southern leg of
Highway 191 has remained relatively undisturbed, with none of the
crowds of visitors or heavy auto traffic which plague other
roadways along the edges of the forest. If 191 is reopened as a
through-highway, not only will these intrusions rapidly move in,
but also ecological invaders - non-native plants and animals which
could out-compete and overwhelm certain native populations.
The original environmental assessment on the reconstruction
project, completed a decade ago, failed to adequately evaluate a
number of potential impacts of the project. Furthermore, it
concluded that road reconstruction would actually improve problems
associated with erosion and geological instability, an assertion
which receives no support from geologists familiar with the area.
"If this were a proposal for an entirely new road," said Bill
Mankin of the Sierra Club International Committee, "it would never
be approved due to its environmental impacts."
The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and
other environmental groups in both Puerto Rico and the mainland
U.S., along with a number of congressional leaders and the Puerto
Rico Department of Natural Resources, are calling for the
preparation of a complete, up-to-date environmental impact
statement (EIS) on the project prior to any final decision on
reconstruction. Unless the EIS process is re-opened, little may
stand in the way of the bulldozers
Because the Caribbean National Forest is considered by the
Puerto Rican and U.S. governments to be an international showcase
for wise forest management, anything which seriously jeopardizes
that image (such as re-opening Highway 191) could incur their
opposition. Evidently, however, they have not yet heard enough
objections raised against the project to change their minds.
It is especially important for the Governor of Puerto Rico,
The Honorable Rafael Hernandez Colon, to hear from opponents of
the road project. Those interested in expressing their view that
all planning for Highway 191 re-construction should be halted
until a thorough EIS is completed, should write:
The Honorable Rafael Hernandez Colon
Governor
La Fortaleza
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00901, USA
For more information contact: Bill Mankin, Sierra Club
International Committee at (404) 881-1532.