Northeast Ecological Corridor Nature Reserve

The Northeast Ecological Corridor Nature Reserve (NECNR) refers to an area designated as a protected Nature Reserve located on the northeast coast of Puerto Rico, between the municipalities of Luquillo and Fajardo. Specifically, the lands that comprise the NEC are located between Luquillo’s town square to the west and Seven Seas Beach to the east, being delineated by PR Route # 3 to its south and the Atlantic Ocean to its north. It was decreed as a protected area by former Puerto Rico Governor Aníbal S. Acevedo-Vilá in April 2008, a decision reversed by Governor Luis G. Fortuño-Burset in October 2009, although he later passed a law in June 2012 re-designated as nature reserve two-thirds of its lands, after intense lobbying and public pressure. Later, in 2013, Governor Alejandro García-Padilla signed a law declaring all lands within the NEC a nature reserve. The area comprises 2,969.64 acres (1201.77 hectares), which include such diverse habitats as forests, wetlands, beaches, coral communities, and a sporadically bioluminescent lagoon. The Corridor is also home to 866 species of flora and fauna, of which 54 are considered critical elements, meaning rare, threatened, endangered and endemic species classified by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER), some even designated as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). These include, among others, federally endangered species such as the plain pigeon, the snowy plover, the Puerto Rican boa, the hawksbill sea turtle and the West Indian manatee. The beaches along the NEC, which are 8.74 kilometers (5.43 miles) long are important nesting grounds for the leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), which starts its nesting season around April each year. El Convento Beach within the Northeast Ecological Corridor (Fajardo, Puerto Rico) and panoramic view of El Yunque National Forest in the background. A grassroots campaign started in the late '90s by concerned citizens, and eventually led by Sierra Club's newly formed Puerto Rico Chapter and other member organizations since 2004, had as its goal the preservation of the NEC. These organizations banded together to form the Coalition for the Northeast Ecological Corridor in 2005 in order to better coordinate their efforts, adopting a formal structure in October 2011. The Coalition's members have used an extensive media campaign and lawsuits in order to halt constructions and have the NEC designated as a nature reserve, achieving reserve status for the NEC in 2008 only to have it reversed in 2009. In November 2010 the Puerto Rico Planning Board (PRPB) unveiled its plan for the Grand Northeast Ecological Corridor Reserve Special Planning Area, which according to its designation document would augment the protected area to 4,006.29 acres (1,621.29 hectares). Nevertheless, members of the Coalition for the Northeast Ecological Corridor have stated that some of the newly protected areas the PRPB would designate in its 2010 plan are susceptible to flooding, already enjoy protected status, or are already developed, making protection of these areas unnecessary. Meanwhile, the new plan, they contended, would leave unprotected 437.05 acres (176.87 hectares) of ecologically sensitive lands precisely where developers had earlier intended to build megaresorts. In January 2012 the Puerto Rico Appeals Court issued a ruling that temporarily barred any Puerto Rican agency from issuing construction permits for proposed projects within the rescinded reserve while the courts issued final verdicts. This ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico shortly thereafter, a decision that turned academic as a law signed in 2012 granted protection to those lands within the NEC that are of public domain (comprising 1,957 acres (792 hectares)), or two-thirds of its original designation and another law, signed in 2013, granted nature reserve status to the NEC in its entirety.