El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico ? Deep amid the dense greenery of a rain forest, down an unmarked road, behind a barbed wire fence in a low-slung compound monitored by security cameras, government scientists are nursing a special patient back to health.

The patient is on pain medication, but lucid enough to ruffle his emerald green feathers and fill the room with angry squawks when a biologist removes him from an incubator. It is a Puerto Rican parrot with a broken leg, a serious injury for one of the world’s most endangered bird species.

In the past, the prognosis would have been grim. “That probably would have been a dead bird,” said Jafet Velez, a biologist who manages the Puerto Rican parrot breeding center in the El Yunque National Forest, one of two such facilities on the island.

The injured bird, a 2-month-old known only as Number 111405, faces an extended stay in the avian equivalent of intensive care and may need surgery. But it is likely to survive. The outlook is increasingly positive as well for the entire species, which has hovered near extinction for decades, with slightly more than a dozen left in the wild at one point.

“Everything is moving in a positive direction,” said Tom White, a Fish and Wildlife biologist who helps manage the island’s wild parrot populations.

It is difficult to pinpoint the number of birds because they are elusive and not all have functioning radio collars. But White said there are 20-25 in El Yunque, east of San Juan, and 40-70 in Rio Abajo Nature Preserve in western Puerto Rico.

Both groups have done well enough that Fish and Wildlife and its partner, Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural Resources, are looking to create additional wild populations, with the next one possibly in the U.S. territory’s rugged, sparsely populated western Maricao region. The next release of birds from captivity is scheduled for December.

There are now about 150 birds each in the two captive breeding centers, in El Yunque and in Rio Abajo. Both breeding centers report a record year for new chicks, about 40 each.

Puerto Rican parrots are one of about 34 species of Amazon parrots found in the Americas. Amazona vittata are known for the bright red shock of feathers at their forehead, white rings around their eyes and the shimmering blue feathers under their wings, usually visible when they dart overhead.

The parrots, which grow to about a foot in length and mate for life, are secretive and considered exceptionally sensitive to any disturbance to their environment, which may be why their numbers plummeted in the wild.