The story of Hope
by Martin Williams
[This article first appeared in the July 1995 issue of Discovery.]
Pag-asa stands a metre or so away from me, and stares. Her stare is not fixed; she bobs her head, and telescopes her neck in and out as she focuses and refocuses, calculating distances. Now fascinated by my tripod, she turns her head to one side, then twists it round till it is upside down, for a view from a fresh angle.Pag-asa is a Philippine eagle. Weighing in at around seven kilos, she is a member of the largest or second largest eagle species, called by aviator Charles Lindbergh `the world's noblest flier'. As a top predator in the archipelago's forests, the noblest flier once reigned over much of the Philippines. But with its forest kingdom slashed to remnants, numbers have plummeted, and the Philippine eagle is today the world's second rarest eagle species; including Pag-asa, only 69 are known.
Pag-asa is special in another way: she is the first of her kind to have been born in captivity. Her name means Hope: hope for her species, and the project trying to save it.
I move to station myself outside another corner of her cage, and Pag-asa follows, flapping across on her big, broad wings, then lands on a stout branch that sways, bounces, and steadies as she grasps it with talons she can spread as wide as my handspan. Now, she is drawn by my hat, gazing at the dull yellow atop the unfamiliar human's head. I lift it, wave it slowly from side to side, and Pag-asa's stare follows, her shock of crown feathers rising to form a crest that frames her intense eyes and powerful steely bill.
I decide I want photos of Pag-asa with her crest up, and try the hat trick again. But she is not so easily startled; she has the hat almost figured out.
Pag-asa's cage adjoins another, equally roomy and also with trees for perching and shade, that is home to her younger sister, Pagkakaisa — Unity. But the two display no sisterly love; sometimes they meet at the wire partition separating them, and grapple with their talons, flapping and crying out in shrill screams.
Nearby, along a path wending through former farmland that is tended like a park, another cage hosts another Philippine eagle. There are also cages and pens with Philippine birds and animals including owls, deer, macaques, and a crocodile in a muddy pool ringed by a wall where a sign reads `Be friendly to our crocodile'. Wild birds are in evidence, too; a brahminy kite swoops down to snatch bread lobbed out towards a pond.
The pond is on the fringe of a stand of tall trees, which were saved to protect a watershed. Amongst the trees is a row of small, ageing cages holding the eagles Jinjing — named after the nickname of his former owner--and Ransom, whose captors had unsuccessfully tried to extort `expenses' from the Philippine eagle breeding centre before surrendering him. There are also, away from public view, cages with other eagles that are in the captive breeding programme. Like all the Philippine Eagle Centre's 16 eagles bar Pag-asa and Pagkakaisa, each was confiscated, donated by former owners, or rescued — Dawan was plucked from the sea off an island of the same name where the trees had been illegally cut — and remains in captivity as hand-reared birds cannot survive in the wild.
The centre is set on gently sloping land. Lower down, beyond plantations of bananas and cocoa trees and orchid farms, is Davao City, the capital of Mindanao. Higher, to the south, rises Mount Apo, home to wild eagles and birthplace of the Philippine eagle breeding programme.
Domingo O Tadena, currently deputy director for captive breeding operations of the Philippine Eagle Foundation, has been with the programme for much of its 17-year history. It was started, he says, by an American organisation that embarked on a film of wild eagles, and a breeding programme on the slopes of Mount Apo.
As is typical of the staff, Domingo had no prior experience with raising eagles or other wild species; but the knowledge and skills he has acquired impress US experts. So too a characteristic typical of foundation staff: dedication.
Dedication has proven essential to the programme, which has been beset with difficulties. During the 1980s, rebels moved into the area around the breeding centre. Sometimes, they took food, which was supplied only weekly. They also sheltered at the centre, figuring it was safe from army attacks.
As problems with the rebels increased, the centre staff decided to relocate. They had become used to the fighting, often witnessing battles on nearby hillsides `like watching a movie; we felt immune'. But one day, enraged by an attack on a bus that killed seven military staff, a colonel gave the order `"hit that area"'. Bombs landed around the centre — one exploded just 70 metres from the main eagle cage--and the staff decided to relocate immediately.
To succeed, the relocation would require subterfuge. The rebels did not want the centre to close, as they would lose their relative haven. Nor did villagers below, who feared there would no longer be repairs to the road; they planned barricades to keep the staff and eagles in place.
Friends of the foundation drove up from Davao. The eagles were caught at night, swaddled so they would be quiet on the journey, and driven down the mountain. There were two such clandestine operations, which took place under cover of a bombardment arranged to keep the rebels away, so they could not take staff hostage; a journalist counted 18 bombs exploding close to the centre.
The following morning, as the eagles were driven to their new home past streamers saying `Welcome', the people waiting for them did not wave or applaud, as even they did not realise the move had taken place.
The foundation also suffered money woes. Until the previous year, 1987, it had received support for the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources. But the DENR had decided the programme should move to Manila and, when the staff refused, cut off funding. Instead of salaries, staff were given only loans towards living expenses. At the new site, Domingo and five colleagues spent four months living in one of the cages that are now ageing and accused by some visitors of being too small for eagles.
Late in 1988, the financial situation improved. Frankfurt Zoological Society donated money that paid for staff quarters, a reception building, and new cages. A politician, Manuel Garcia, began helping, canvassing local businessmen for support for an adopt-an-eagle scheme — and warning that if they did not give, Davao would lose the eagles to Manila.
With finances much improved and the new centre established, the breeding programme again received attention. The first fertile egg had been laid in 1987, but failed to hatch. After the trauma of moving, it was not until 1990 that there were the next, two fertile eggs. Again, they did not hatch.
Programme consultant Dr Jim Grier, of the US-based Peregrine Fund, then made good on a promise that, if the eggs did not hatch, he would host and train two foundation staff at a bird of prey breeding centre. The two were Domingo, and Ben Salarza.
Ben has a bizarre, yet pivotal, role at the foundation: wearing a thick leather coat, a hat and leather gloves, he acts as surrogate mate for Junior, a male Philippine eagle.
After being assigned this task, Ben spent several hours over a period of six days sitting outside Junior's cage until the eagle was used to him. Then, Ben could enter the cage for the first of countless sessions together. Eventually, Junior attempted copulation. `I was afraid — I immediately ran out of the cage,' recalls Ben. Realising Junior was trying to copulate, not attack, Ben promptly went back inside, and `he jumped on my shoulder'. Now, says Ben after perhaps hundreds of such encounters, `it feels almost normal'. (His friends joke about the situation, but Ben tells them he is proud to be working on the programme.)
To gather semen, Ben touches a glove to the `copulating' eagle. Staff check samples for viability — Junior's early semen was infertile — and, if results are encouraging, use it for inseminating a female eagle.
One of these females is Diola, who has another surrogate partner. This second partnership ensures Diola can be inseminated when she is receptive, boosting the chances she will produce a fertile egg. Thanks to Junior's semen, and experience Ben and Domingo gained with the Peregrine Fund, she is the mother of Pag-asa and Pagkakaisa, which both hatched in 1992.
The centre is trying other cooperative pairings, and forceful insemination of females that have not yet been imprinted on human partners. A natural pairing, with a male and female sharing a cage, also holds promise (although the most obvious way of breeding eagles, such pairings are hard to achieve in practice, with females prone to vigorously reject advances: some years ago, a male died of wounds inflicted by Diola).
Despite these efforts, there were no fertile eggs in 1993 or 1994. But the foundation staff remain committed to plans for the next stage of the programme: rearing a chick with minimal human contact, training it to catch living prey, then releasing it into the wild.
For the release to be successful, there must remain an expanse of forest that is not already the territory of a pair of wild eagles. Given the scale of the Philippines' onslaught on its forests, without which the breeding programme would never have been needed, this may be difficult to find. But the country has, belatedly, adopted forest conservation measures.
Measures that are not without problems, some of which are evident in a valley near the breeding centre, in the domain of wild eagles. In the valley's lower reaches, a dirt road passes through farmland with shanty houses. It is a former logging road; the hillsides had been cleared for timber, but are today clothed with secondary forest that supports the lemurs, monkeys, snakes and other animals the eagles prey on.
Though the loggers have moved on, the forest is not safe. Some has been felled to make way for coffee, which Domingo reckons will survive perhaps three to four years before rain washes most of the soil from the steep slopes.
Besides destroying forest, farmers moving into the eagles' remaining strongholds sometimes steal nestlings.
The wild eagles are not, though, without friends. An adopt-a-nest scheme, in which the foundation paid villagers for finding and protecting nests, met with some success. Now, the foundation is trying to boost livelihoods of people in eagle territories, and encourage a switch to farming methods more in harmony with forests.
Tourism could bring money to poor rural areas. Del Monte has established a tourist lodge near one favoured nest site, but it is yet to be well promoted. Domingo dreams of a tourist lodge on a hillside spur high above the valley with the farms and forest. The air is cooler here than in Davao, the scenery is good, with views to the sea. But his ideas have so far met with little interest.
The centre, however, is proving a big hit with visitors, with over 100,000 arriving each year, many of them schoolchildren. The visitor book is peppered with comments like `Cool!' `Magnificent!' `Beautiful' and `Yes!'; one reads, `I feel happy because there are some people who are kind to nature.'.
The visitor numbers are far higher than they were last decade. This is partly due to the new centre being far easier to reach from Davao than the one on Mount Apo.
Then, there was the hatching of Pag-asa on 15 January 1992, an event that received widespread publicity. Besides attracting visitors, Pag-asa helped bring in support for the programme: Shell paid for the cage housing Pag-asa and her sister, the Japanese government funded the nearby cage. The Philippine Tourism Authority paid for a new path.
Members of the public were also encouraged to give, through a Peso for Pag-asa campaign. Supporters could join the Philippine Eagle Foundation, Inc, and receive the newsletter, Pag-asa.
A video shown at the centre includes footage of the birth of Pag-asa. All is quiet as a rubber-gloved hand carefully turns a cracked egg, and helps remove debris as the chick struggles and is then, at last, free of her confines. `The official time is 10.40,' says a solemn, American voice. Then, another off-camera observer cries `Yeah!'.
The success had come after almost 14 years, years marked by the nearby battles and loss of funds, and plagued by doubts as births remained elusive. Domingo well remembers the day: `We bought champagne and a roasted pig. And had a big, big party. Everybody was singing and dancing.
`It's a funny job,' he reflects of eagle raising, of the time spent, the sleepless nights, the need to turn the egg by hand every three hours, then, when it hatches, watching the newborn for 24 hours a day. `There are so many hopes before we get the chick,' he says.
`First, we hope that the eagle will lay. Then, we hope the egg is not broken. Then, we hope it is fertile. After 10 to 12 days, we transfer it to the incubator, and hope it will hatch.
`Then,' he says, `that's it.' The eaglet is born. There is Hope.
The Philippine Eagle Foundation: site with information on attempts to save the eagle — including news about eagles born in captivity since my article.
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