The parrot on America’s El Yunque quarter once had only about 13 birds left in the wild; biologists bred and released new flocks across Puerto Rico

Turn over a 2012 US quarter, and you'll see a tiny green bird tucked behind a plant, next to a coquí tree frog perched on a leaf. That is the Puerto Rican parrot, and it is on the coin because it came so close to extinction. A 1992 genetic study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found the wild population of this parrot had declined to about 13 birds in 1975. Biologists have painstakingly rebuilt the species, one carefully bred chick at a time, from that small number over the decades since.

A coin that hides a near-extinction

The El Yunque National Forest quarter is part of the US Mint’s America the Beautiful series of coins. It features the Puerto Rican parrot with a coqui tree frog, both species native to El Yunque, a 28,000-acre rainforest in Puerto Rico. It is the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System. Most people who spend this coin probably never notice the bird on the back.


How a genetic study helped save the species

It is not as simple as breeding and releasing them to save a species from just 13 birds. When a population is very small, the animals are necessarily closely related, which creates problems for breeding. The PNAS study titled ‘Application of DNA fingerprinting to the recovery program of the endangered Puerto Rican parrot,’ examined the DNA of the founding captive parrots, all of which were captured from the wild between 1973 and 1983. They found that pairs with more similar DNA were far less likely to breed successfully. The study also pointed out that the captive breeding programme has been less successful than that of a closely related species, the Hispaniolan parrot, leading researchers to inbreeding as one likely cause. This gave wildlife managers a tool to match the parrots more closely, pairing birds with different genetic backgrounds to preserve the long-term health of the species.

Building flocks in captivity

The captive breeding program began with an initial founder group in 1973 and continued to add wild-caught birds through 1983; the same population was later analysed in the genetic study above. The 2014 study, ‘The Puerto Rican parrot reintroduction program: Sustainable management of the aviary population,’ published in Zoo Biology, explored the development of this breeding programme over the next few decades. Managers had to be careful, as captive parrots became the only source for all birds released into the wild, the study explains. But taking too many parrots out of the aviary each year could shrink the captive population itself. To do this, the researchers created a studbook for every parrot in the programme, whether living, dead, or released, and used it to test different release strategies. This modelling showed how many birds could be safely taken for release without endangering the aviary's own future, guiding those decisions for years to come.

Three forests, a fragile recovery

Wild Puerto Rican parrots are found today in three separate forests. For decades, parrots have lived in two of these, El Yunque and Río Abajo State Forests. The third, the Maricao State Forest, is newer. The most recent five-year status review of the species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service states that the first parrots were released in Maricao on Nov. 30, 2016. The review also recounts a painful setback: hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017 and reduced El Yunque’s wild flock to just three known survivors, effectively wiping out the flock there for a time. Biologists have spent years since then rebuilding that population with new releases near the aviary.

The same review also says that in 2020 an outbreak of disease at the main aviary, caused by a bacterium known as Chlamydia psittaci, killed 23 captive birds before staff managed to bring it under control. The review notes red-tailed hawks are still a constant threat, and they are responsible for the vast majority of known parrot deaths at the release sites.

Where the parrots stand today

It’s been a slow recovery, but the numbers are telling a real story. The same Fish and Wildlife Service review states that the total population of Puerto Rican parrots, including both wild birds and those in breeding aviaries, increased from about 577 individuals in 2016 to about 862 by the end of 2022. That meant about 260 parrots were living in the wild across the three forests, with the remainder in captivity and breeding facilities. That’s a long way from 13. But the report is careful not to call this a finished success story. The wild flock at El Yunque has a greater long-term risk of extinction than the other two sites, it notes, and the species is still officially listed as endangered, a status it has held since March 11, 1967.

Why this coin deserves a second glance

The next time this coin turns up in your change, it is well worth taking a moment to consider the little bird stamped upon its surface. Fives decades of unglamorous efforts have gone into making that image possible: genetic analysis in a laboratory, captive-bred chicks in an aviary, and biologists working their way through a hurricane-destroyed forest to take an inventory of surviving individuals. The Puerto Rican parrot has not yet made a full recovery, but it has rebounded from just 13 individual birds to hundreds, making it one of the most remarkable success stories in America's spare change.