Hurricane Maria striking Puerto Rico in 2017 was one of the heaviest storms ever affecting the Caribbean island. Almost 3000 people lost their life and the hurricane caused more than $90 billion in damages.
In addition, Hurricane Maria also killed about 30 million trees with serious consequences for native biodiversity in an already overexploited landscape.
With the aim to rebuild multi functionality into Puerto Rican tropical forests; to promote pollinators, biodiversity, productivity, and resilience to future disturbance and climate change -a collaborative research project was started in 2018. In this project operational restoration and community involvement are combined with research to better understand how restoration should be done to help these forests bounce back from disturbance.
The project is a collaboration between New West Center for Eco-Cultural Restoration at Northern Arizona University, SLU and Reforesta.