DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Efforts to conserve the endangered Philippine Eagle got a much-needed boost when another eaglet was hatched Sunday night, the 23rd hatched in captivity at the Philippine Eagle Center (PEC) here in Malagos Calinan district.
It has been two years since the PEC last produced an eaglet under its captive breeding program.
The celebrated eagle Pag-asa was the first Philippine Eagle bred in captivity in 1992, and is now housed in a giant special cage at the center run by the non-profit Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF).
Weighing 137.5 grams, the offspring of natural eagle pair Tsai and Princess Maasim hatched at around 6:12 p.m. Sunday.
The eaglet needed some assistance during the hatching, according to Ana Mae Sumaya, curator of the PEF’s breeding program.
“At least 12 hours had already passed since the chick was expected to pip through its shell, so I decided to intervene. I poked a hole through the eggshell on Saturday afternoon to help start the chick through the process, and kept watch with the rest of the breeding team for 26 more hours before the eaglet was completely free,” Sumaya said.
Baby Philippine eagles are about the size of a baseball and come out fluffy white, growing their distinctive brown feathers after about a month.
They reach their full height of about three feet within six months from birth. The newly hatched chick is currently fed small amounts of ground meat every four hours.
Sumaya said she is “relieved and very happy” with the hatching of the new eaglet.
“It had been an uneasy two years since we last had a chick as we implemented changes in our breeding program; we are ecstatic that the hard work has paid off,” she said.
The PEF had recently been reviewing and revamping the breeding program, taking on more aggressive approaches and developing new protocols to further improve the reproductive success rate at the PEC – the breeding, research and rehabilitation facility run by the PEF – to save the endangered bird from extinction.
The PEF’s breeding program is intended to supplement eagle populations in the wild by replacing those lost and by reintroducing captive-bred birds to vacant habitats and those occupied by unpaired wild eagles.
PEF executive director Dennis Salvador believes the new hatching ushers in a new chapter in the organization’s history.
“The PEF’s first milestone was Pag-asa’s birth in 1992, when we broke through the challenge of breeding these eagles in captivity. Once our breeding techniques stabilized, we were then able to do the first test release of a captive-bred eagle to the wild in 2004, to see how captive-bred birds fare in their forest habitats,” Salvador said.
He said PEF learned some lessons from the test release of eagle Kabayan in the forested area at the foot of Mt. Apo in 2004.
Although the release ended tragically in Kabayan’s accidental electrocution, the PEF found out that captive-bred birds learn to hunt on their own, which saw the PEF adapting release protocols used with other species.
Salvador said Kabayan’s release and those succeeding it opened up more challenges for the organization.
The PEF noted that captive-bred eagles and even wild eagles rescued and released back to their natural habitats do not seem averse to humans and have in fact been reported frequenting communities and in plain sight of human populations.
Apparently, young eagles, as with many juveniles of other species, are very curious and do not recognize humans as a danger to them.
This behavior has left the eagles vulnerable, as in the case of eagle Kagsabua who was killed and made into soup by a resident close to the release site in 2008.
“While we doubled up our efforts in educating communities close to eagle areas and engaging them in conservation work, we also took a good look at how we rear captive-bred birds at the PEC. Changes in rearing and release protocols will be implemented starting with this new chick,” Salvador said.
If it develops successfully to maturity, the new eaglet shall also be released to the wild.
Meanwhile, the PEF said it is looking for partners to support the release program. The partner will have the privilege of naming the new eaglet.