RIO GRANDE, Puerto Rico -- El Yunque National Forest is one of Puerto Rico’s biggest tourist attractions. A year after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, the recovery at this national treasure is far from over.

"You can see there are a lot of bare trees where there were a lot of leaves before," said tourist Rafael Chavez.

Today, a ride up El Yunque’s winding roads reveals a rainforest in renaissance. It's slowly thickening up after Irma and Maria stripped much of its natural beauty last September.

But the storms caused even bigger problems. Two hundred and fifty landslides across the rainforest wiped out access roads and plant life. 

"There were piles and piles of leaves into the ground. We also observed a lot of animals, birds mixed into that debris. It was kind of a shocking experience but soon after, we started to see the vegetation coming back," said U.S. Forest Service Project Leader Grizelle Gonzalez.

She added, "It’s a very resilient forest."

After Maria, hundreds of volunteers assisted in the massive clean-up effort.

Twelve major areas of the rainforest are under repairs right now. Trucks bring tons of dirt and rocks to rebuild the collapsed walls, and Mother Nature does the rest.

"Birds start flying and dropping seeds, and then we will have a natural restoration in this part of the landslides," said Gonzalez.

While construction is underway, parts of the rainforest mostly north of the Yocahu Tower will remain off limits to the more than a million tourists that visit El Yunque every year. Gonzalez says additional areas will reopen in the coming months.

Yet that’s a fraction of the decade or more it could take El Yunque to return to its former glory.

"Now we are offering something that is very different, showing the forest on its recovery and its resilience," said Gonzalez.

For the latest updates on El Yunque’s recovery, visit the U.S. Forest Service website.