By Manuel T. Cayon | Mindanao Bureau Chief
DAVAO CITY—A Philippine Eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) was rescued this week from what appears to be another attempt at hunting the bird despite the stringent law prohibiting it.
Beth N. Ramos, information officer-designate at the Maitum municipal government in Sarangani province, said a farmer in Barangay Batian, about 19 kilometers from the town center, found the bird on Monday near his farm, standing still.
Surprised that it did not fly when he tried to approach the bird, resident Gibson Badal, 26, took the bird for safekeeping.
According to Badal, he saw the bird standing about a meter tall and appeared weak. The bird has blue-gray eyes, he added.
Ramos said her cousin, Alver Caasi, who happened to visit Batian on Monday, was told by residents they were selling the bird “but he [Caasi] advised them not to”.
“I told them they will face the full force of the law if they do that,” Ramos quoted Caasi as telling the residents. Caasi took photographs of the bird from his mobile phone and sent it to Ramos, who also informed the municipal government. He fed the Philippine Eagle with live chicken, which consumed half of it and the other half on the following day.
Some staff from the Maitum local government and personnel of the Davao City-based Philippine Eagle Center (PEC) brought the raptor to the PEC on Tuesday night, Ramos said.
Edgar Calderon, park maintenance foreman of the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office, said the eagle could be 1 year old, with a nest probably within a 5-kilometer radius from where it was found.
Initially, the first team to reach the place found the bird with no injury but still took extra care in transporting the bird to the town center and to Davao City.
An x-ray at the hospital in Calinan, Davao City—the next barangay to the PEC—indicated, however, that the bird sustained an injury, pellet was embedded at its left groin. Veterinarians said the incident might have happened earlier because the wound may have healed.
The bird was sent to the eagle center in Malagos and appeared to be recovering, Ramos said. Camp authorities informed the Maitum town officials that it would release the eagle back to Barangay Batian when it would fully recover. Ramos said the camp authorities would not remove the pellet, saying it might endanger the eagle that was not known to adapt to surgery.
“I am thankful with the rescue of the juvenile Philippine Eagle. This only proves that Maitum has still thick forest that we ought to preserve and protect,” Mayor Alexander Bryan Reganit said in a statement issued later by its municipal information office. “I will do my best to protect the endangered species of Maitum as our legacy to the future generations.”
Dennis Joseph Salvador, executive director at Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF), told the Maitum authorities that the bird was a Philippine Eagle, based on the photographs sent to him.
He also said the PEF has confirmed the presence of a pair of Philippine Eagles when its conservation director then, Jayson Ibanez, visited Batian in 1996.
The Maitum information office said Barangay Batian is within Mount Busa complex, a priority conservation and protection biodiversity-study area. It is one of the remaining forests in the province.
Mount Busa has an area of 114,144 hectares and was declared as a key biodiversity area (KBA 116) and an important bird area (IBA PH0105) in 2001. It harbors critically endangered, threatened, vulnerable and rare bird species and connects several conservation priorities, it added.
The Environmental Conservation and Protection Center (ECPC) of the provincial government has reported sightings of tarsier, wild deer, pigs, monkeys, bats, civets and endangered species of birds at the foot of Mount Busa.
However, Mount Busa, which straddles the towns of Maitum, Kiamba and Maasim in Sarangani province, “is threatened by conversion to farmland, kaingin or slash-and-burn, wildlife hunting, illegal logging and mining,” according to ECPC.
Image credits: Maitum Information Office