Biologists striving to save Puerto Rican bird all but wiped out by Hurricane Maria

EL YUNQUE, Puerto Rico — Biologists are trying to save the last of the endangered Puerto Rican parrots after more than half the population of the bright green birds with turquoise-tipped wings disappeared when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and destroyed their habitat and food sources.

In the tropical forest of El Yunque, only two of the 56 wild birds that once lived there survived the Category 4 storm that pummeled the U.S. territory in September 2017. Meanwhile, only four of 31 wild birds in a forest in the western town of Maricao survived, along with 75 out of 134 wild parrots living in the Rio Abajo forest in the central mountains of Puerto Rico, scientists said.

Several dozen parrots have been born in captivity and in the wild since Maria, but the species is still in danger, according to scientists.

“We have a lot of work to do,” said Gustavo Olivieri, parrot-recovery program coordinator for Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural Resources.

Federal and local scientists will meet next month to determine how best to revive a species that numbered more than 1 million in the 1800s but dwindled to 13 birds in the 1970s after decades of forest clearing.

The U.S. and Puerto Rican governments launched a program in 1972 that led to the creation of three breeding centers. Just weeks before Maria hit, scientists reported 56 wild birds at El Yunque, the highest since the program was launched.

But the population decline is now especially worrisome because the parrots that vanished from El Yunque were some of the last remaining wild ones, said Marisel Lopez, who oversees the parrot recovery program at El Yunque for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“It was devastating. After so many years of having worked on this project...,” she stopped talking and sighed.

The Puerto Rican Amazon is Puerto Rico’s only remaining native parrot and is one of roughly 30 species of Amazon parrots found in the Americas. The red-foreheaded birds grow to nearly a foot in length, are known for their secrecy and usually mate for life, reproducing once a year.

More than 460 birds remain captive at the breeding centers in El Yunque and Rio Abajo forests, but scientists have not released any of