Common Trees of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

within these forests. About 2,500,000 cubic feet
of timber have been removed from the forests in
order to harvest mature trees and to eliminate inferior
trees. About 7,500 acres of forest have been
improved in this way. An additional 22,000 acres
of deforested lands have been planted with trees.
Seven recreation are= within these forests have
been built for the use of the public. These improvements
represent a total investment of not less
than $15,000,000.
The Federal and Puerto Rican governments
have cooperated in encouraging forestr on pri-
vate lands as well. The Agricnltural xtension
Service of the University of Puerto Rico and the
Federal Soil Conservation Service advise farmers
on forestry techniques. The Commonwealth Di-
vision of Forests, Fisheries, and 'ATildlife (the suc-
cessor to the Puerto Rico Forest Service) and the
United Stntes Forest Service cooperate in the pro-
duction of forest tree nursery stock for distribu-
tion to farmers. The United Stntes Forest Service
has since 1939 conducted research in forest man-
agement and utilization in Puerto Rico, and since
1955 its primary. function has been forest research,
carried out at the Institute of Tropical Forestry
in Rio Piedras.
The task of conserving and making productive
Puerto Rico's forest lands (fig. 4) is far from
completed. More than 500,000 acres within the
island are not well suited to other than forest
crops. Present public forest lands under protec-
tion and management constitute only about 16 per-
mnt of this area. Almost none of the private
lands are under forest management, and more
than half of them are completely deforested.
More serious still is that substantial areas of such
land are subject to shifting cultivation, with at-
tendant erosion and sedimentation of reservoirs
downstream. The placing of Puerto Rico's forest
lands under good management is a task requiring
more research, extension, and, in some areas, pub-
lic acquisition of lands.
H
In the Virgin Islands a few old lams exist regarding
the protection of trees along streams, but
in the course of time these islands, both &e British
and United States, became almost completely deforested
to the tops of the mountains. However,
in the United States islands extensive secondary
forests have developed with the decline in population
and agriculture which took place in the past
50 years.
Possibly the outstanding early development
which is of significance to forestry was the introduction
of Dominican mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni)
into St. Thomas and St. Croix. This
introduction, judging by the size of some of the
older trees on St. Croix, must have been made at
least 200 ears ago. A planting in the hills south-
\vest of 2' .hristiansted, St. Croix, has given rise to
natural regeneration of mnhogany covering some
200 adjacent acres, suggesting that this valuable
species might be introduced into secondary forests
elsewhere in the islands.
A limited government propam of tree planting
>\-as carried out in St. Thomas in the early
1930b, administered from Puerto Rico. Undoubtedly
some of the younger mahognnies on
that island are n result. Nevertheless, this species
is relatively unknown in St. John and Tortola.
A new forestrv program is now underway in the
United States Virgin Islands, sponsored by the
Federal Government through the Virgin Islands
Corporation. Trees are being propagated fpr cooperntive
planting on private lands, a sawmill has
been set up to utilize mature trees, and new species
are being tested as to their adaptability to local
growing conditions. Estate Thomas Experimental
Forest ~~\.ns established on St. Croix in 1963.
In the British Virgin Islands the Protection of
Trees and Conservation of Soil and Water Ordinance
of 1954 laid the basis for the protection of
areas requiring tree growth as a protection for soil
and water resources. That government contemplates
initial concentration on the protection of
intermittent stream beds by tree planting.