January 15, 1992 was a historic date for the Philippine Eagle Center (PEF). It was on this day that the first tropical eagle bred in captivity was born. They named the eagle, which was the result of a long and tedious work, “Pag-asa” (which means “hope” in Tagalog).
“Pag-asa connotes hope for the continued survival of the Philippine eagle; hope that if people get together for the cause of the Philippine eagle, it shall not be doomed to die,” Dennis Salvador, PEF executive director, was quoted as saying.
Last February 9 – after 21 years! – “Pag-asa” finally sired an offspring. The chick, which weighed 158 grams, had to be assisted by Anna Mae Sumaya to successfully break from the shell.
“The chick hatched from a breeched position so I had to help it to avoid damaging the vital veins that could potentially cause its death,” revealed Sumaya, the PEF’s curator for conservation breeding program.
Normally, chicks pip through the upper part of the egg, the broad end, where the air space is located.
But in this case, the chick started to crack the shell on its side. So Sumaya decided to assist the chick to keep it hurting or even killing itself. The chick completely hatched at 1:55 am, about 48 hours after it began to break its shell.
Salvador said the center waited four days to announce the hatching of the eaglet because they wanted to make sure the chick would survive.
“This accomplishment underscores the fact breeding these birds in captivity remains difficult. We are certainly a long way off in coping with losses in the wild.
The Philippine eagles and their forest habitat continue to be imperiled by man-made activities like logging, mining and other development projects,” Salvador said in a statement.
According to the PEF statement, the eaglet comes from an eagle named “Kalinawan” (peace), a 29-year old female that was rescued from Zamboanga del Sur and turned over to the eagle center in 2009.
Kalinawan, already imprinted on humans when rescued, adapted well at the center and easily took on a human surrogate. She was inseminated with Pag-asa’s semen through cooperative artificial insemination. So far, the chick is the first of third of generation of Philippine eagles bred at the eagle center.
“While we celebrate this recent achievement, we are still worried about the fate of the Philippine eagles in the wild. We breed Philippine eagles to replace population losses in the wild but we are uncertain of their safety once they are released. They are constantly under threat of human persecution,” he added.
The Philippine eagle is listed by the International Union of Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as among the country’s threatened birds.
If the national bird dies, according to former President Fidel V. Ramos, who declared it as the country’s bird icon, “so will all the country’s efforts at conserving its natural resources and treasures.”
According to Salvador, the Philippine eagle has become a critically endangered species because the loss of the forest had made it lose its natural habitat. Studies have shown that a pair of Philippine eagle needs at least 7,000 to 13,000 hectares of forest as a nesting territory.
“If present trends continue, the entire Philippine Eagle population could suddenly crash,” warned Salvador.
The captive breeding is one of the center’s top programs as its main objective is to augment wild populations of the endangered bird while serving as a “genetic insurance” for the species.
Studies conducted by the center indicate that more than 90% of fledglings and juveniles do not reach breeding age or adulthood primarily because of human persecution (mainly shooting followed by trapping-capture incidents). A Philippine eagle (scientific name: “Pithecophaga jefferyi”) is considered adult when it reaches the age of six to seven years.
If the old breeding pairs in the wild are not being replaced, Salvador said, it is more likely that the whole Philippine Eagle population could suddenly collapse.
“Before we know it, we’d probably lose the Philippine eagle. We’ll have a national bird that doesn’t exist,” Salvador warned.
“We estimate that there are about 400 pairs (of Philippine Eagle) left in the wild found in Mindanao, Samar and Luzon,” Salvador said. “It is probably already extinct in Leyte. Good news is we found populations in the Cordilleras where it was not known to occur.”
The eagle center was opened to the public in 1988. Simulating a tropical rain forest environment, it offers visitors a glimpse into the country’s forest ecosystem (as it is located at the foothills of Mount Apo, the country’s highest peak).
Here, visitors – both locals and foreigners – can see more than a dozen eagles, some of which were rescued after they were trapped or shot.
