World's largest bird of prey faces extinction in Philippines

By David Botbol [10 pts ML]

DAVAO, Philippines (AFP): Perched majestically in a massive cage, Pag-asa doubly arouses the curiosity of visitors: He is one of the last members of a vanishing eagle species, and the first to be born in captivity.

Conceived by artificial insemination, the bird -- whose name means "hope" -- symbolizes efforts to avert the extinction of the Philippine eagle, the world's largest bird of prey with a wingspan stretching two meters.

Today they number less than 70, from several hundred in the early 1980s, an alarming trend which fuels growing awareness among Filipinos that in order to save the eagle, which has become a national symbol, they must first save its natural habitat.

The unique predator "is above all endangered by the accelerating disappearance of the tropical forest," said Domingo Tadena, an official of the Davao-based Philippine Eagle Foundation, where Pag-asa was born in 1992.

The forest cover has shrunk from 17 million hectares (42 million acres) in 1934 to six million hectares in 1991, and illegal logging continues, cornering the eagle in the shreds of what used to be one of Asia's lushest forests.

Located in Malagos, a mountain district of this city on the large southern island of Mindanao, the private foundation shelters 16 eagles, and is trying to protect the 47 others counted in the wilds across the archipelago.

It started out by collecting sick or wounded eagles, and then trying to make them reproduce in captivity, an exercise largely discouraged by the difficulty of pairing off compatible couples, Tadena said.

Monogamous

In the wilds, the strictly monogamous eagle dominates the food chain in a zone spanning up to 100 square kilometers (40 square miles), regulating the population of its prey -- monkeys, snakes and wild cats -- but it will only attack man if its nest is threatened.

Tadena's neck and face bear the scars from three attacks by the formidable birds, also known as the monkey-eating eagle, in the cages of Malagos.

But more often than not it is the other way around. An eagle wounded by a hunter's bullet was captured in northern Mindanao last March, but died of infection last week after being put on public display.

A spectacular breakthrough occurred in January 1992 with the birth of Pag-asa and later that year of Pagkakaisa (Unity), also by artificial insemination.

But since then all new attempts have failed, revealing the limitations of breeding the eagles in captivity. Hence the proliferation of projects aimed at protecting their natural environment.

"The problem," notes Dennis Salvador, the young director of the foundation, "is to teach nature conservation to people with empty stomachs."

The remote areas where the last eagles have found refuge are the haunts of tribes who live at subsistence levels, accustomed to wanton logging and slash-and-burn farming.

In five pilot areas around Mindanao, tribal communities of about 25 families each have become the "guardians" of eagles' nests and the forest, in exchange for livelihood assistance on land that has already been cleared, such as fertilizers, farm tools and cooperatives.

The experience, said Salvador, "to a large extent succeeded in reducing the pressure on the forest," but there are not enough funds to develop the project.

Financed largely by donations from private firms or organizations, the foundation is racing against time: it estimates that the number of eagles must reach about 200 by the year 2000 in order to have any hope of saving the species from extinction.

- 30 -