When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, it transformed the island’s forests into tangled messes of split tree trunks, downed branches, and fallen leaves. El Yunque rainforest in northeast Puerto Rico, a 28,000-acre national forest renowned for its rugged beauty and high biodiversity, was particularly hard hit. As winds of up to 155 miles per hour whipped across the Luquillo Mountains, where El Yunque is located, Hurricane Maria stripped forest canopies bare, turning a lush, green landscape into a muddy expanse of leafless trees.

Four years later, the El Yunque rainforest still shows clear signs of damage from Maria, the strongest storm to strike the island since 1928. But the ecosystem is slowly