El Yunque National Forest

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria, a deadly category 5 hurricane devastated Dominica, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Amidst the devastation was the El Yunque National Forest, the only tropical rainforest among the USDA Forest Service’s 193 million acres. Reliably lush and green, the...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited the Caribbean Climate Hub in Puerto Rico earlier this month to lead a roundtable discussions with local agricultural officials, farmers and ranchers, USDA agency leaders, economic investors, and scientists, and to view first-hand the Hub’s pioneering work in...

When it comes to the U.S. Forest Service, it’s not always about trees. Sometimes it’s all about the birds, the dragonflies and the butterflies. Oh, and the bats. At least, that’s what it was all about during a ceremony last month recognizing some great contributions from U.S. Forest Service and...

Climate change has been deemed one of the greatest challenges facing agriculture, world food security, and human development in the 21st century. It’s a challenge that USDA is working to mitigate while also making sure that our farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are ready to adapt to the...

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. From South Carolina’s coastal plain to the North Carolina mountains to the tropics of Puerto Rico to the southern Sierra...

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico is unique for the U.S. Forest Service. At 28,000 acres, it’s the smallest national...

Imagine going to the grocery store and getting a national forest quarter as your change and holding onto it as a collector’s item. That can happen now because of the recent release of the El Yunque National Forest coin. The coin features the endangered Puerto Rican parrot and the coqui tree frog...

Deep amid the dense greenery of a rain forest, U.S. Forest Service scientists are nursing a special patient back to health. The patient is on pain medication, but lucid enough to ruffle his emerald green feathers and fill the room with angry squawks when a biologist removes him from an incubator. It...