Puertorican Rainforest

The magazine “bleib gesund” says that scientists from the university of Heidelberg now found out that consuming citrons or at least their juice helps the body to fight noro-viruses.
Why I post this here? First of all the noro-virus is spread by people who eat dirty food or who don’t have clean hands while eating – which is the case especially in rather poor areas like we know them from Puerto Rico. Secondly Puerto Rico is one of the leading exporting countries of citrons according to this article.

“Tagesschau” says that Puerto Rico – it’s problems are probably best known since the musical “West Side Story” – now is completely insolvent with debts that count millions of dollars. The thing is that this island can’t file for bankruptcy as this state may be US-territory, but at the same time has a very special relation to the United States. The official term is “associated”, which means they are US-territory, but no US-state. Even though male Puerto Ricans serve in the US-Army and even though they are officially considered US-citizens, they have no right to vote in the USA. Nor do they have to pay taxes. This lack of paid taxes makes it very non-lucrative for the States to aid them.

Now a little cultural background information: Centuries ago the Taíno people ( an ethnic group belonging to the Arawak people ) developed their culture in Venezuela. They had an advanced agriculture and knew how to treat gold and cotton wool.
They were a peaceful people, not even making human or animal sacrifices as most other tribes did back then, but even before the arrival of Kolumbus this characteristic trait that actually sounds rather positive brought them into trouble. When the Carib people arrived, they oppressed the Taíno people and made them flee to some small islands like the Bahamas or Jamaica, but they also settled down in Puerto Rico where Columbus discovered them.
This discovery sealed the fate of these natives: Some of them died of sicknesses the arrivals brought on this continent, while others got enslaved and died of the bad living conditions. When it was already tolate they realized that they had to fight against the invaders, but they weren’t experienced enough. This and the fact that they didn’t have as well – developed weapons as the Spaniards only caused a lot more of them to die. All in all the Europeans made this remarkable tribe go extinct within a few decades.
What still remains today is their ceramic, their way of creating irrigation canals and…the hammock. They were the first. This word comes from the Spanish word “la hamaca” which in turn got derived from the Taíno word for it.
Apart from that the Spaniards later also derived many other words from this language, e.g. manatí ( manatee ) or papaya. Even some Taíno first names still are popular in this country.
However nothing else remains…Nothing but some archeological discoveries and some descriptions made by the Europeans who discovered them!

On May 13th Dorothee wrote: “http://www.worldinternetchallenge.com/” and “http://www.rainforestconservation.org/rainforest-primer/4-case-studies-in-tropical-deforestation/a-the-neotropics/1-puerto-rico” are the websites of two organisations I only can recommend you.
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The most endangered parrot – the Puerto Rican parrot – lives in this rainforest. The link “http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/esa_works/profile_pages/PuertoRicanParrot.html” firstly shows you a photo of this bird and secondly it belongs to an organisation that has a clear recovery program for this animal.

I apologize if this information is wrong, but I read that this forest covers a total area of 11270 ha.