Philippine Eagle Center: Home To World's Noblest Flier

“For me, the highlight of my Davao trip was a visit to the Philippine Eagle Center,” wrote a Cebuano journalist after he returned home.  “The drive, although a bit far, was worth it after seeing the majestic creature.”

Visitors, both foreigners and locals, who come to Davao City for the first time, are almost always attracted to the Philippine Eagle Center in Malagos, Calinan.  Some 30 kilometers northwest and about an hour’s ride from downtown Davao, the center is the transient home of the Philippine eagle.

Here, visitors can see more than a dozen eagles, some of which were rescued after they were trapped or shot. Thirty-two birds have been raised as part of a breeding program.  Most of them are being induced to breed in captivity.  Pag-asa is one of its noted attractions; it made the headline around the world as the first tropical eagle conceived through artificial insemination.  Pag-asa is the Tagalog word for “hope.”

“Pag-asa connotes hope for the continued survival of the Philippine eagle, hope that if people get together for the cause of the eagle, it shall not be doomed to die,” said Dennis Salvador, the executive director of Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF).

PEF manages the eagle center.  A private, non-stock organization, it is dedicated to saving the endangered bird.  “By using the Philippine eagle as the focal point of conservation, we are, in the process, saving wildlife and their habitat,” said Salvador. 

The Philippines is among the world’s seventeen “megadiversity” countries, which together account for some 60-70 of total global biodiversity.  The World Conservation Union has identified the country as one of the most endangered of the world’s biodiversity “hotspots” – threatened areas with very high levels of biodiversity.

The Philippine eagle is one of the most endangered species in the country.  According to Salvador, the reason for this was due to massive deforestation.  “Deforestation is terrible,” he pointed out.  “The Philippine eagle has become a critically endangered species because the loss of the forest had made it lose its natural habitat.”

PEF aims someday to release the captive birds and those that have been artificially bred back into its natural habitat.  But “if time will come that we have enough stocks, where shall we release them” Salvador wondered. 

The Netherland ambassador to the Philippines Robert G. Brinks echoed the same sentiment.  “If nothing drastic is done about deforestation of the remaining woodland areas in Mindanao, within the lifetime of the present generation, the heritage of the national bird of the Philippines will only be seen on DVD, or at best tethered to a stump of a dead tree in the Eagle Center in Davao,” he deplored.

Efforts to save the Philippine eagle was started way back 1965 by Jesus A. Alvarez, then director of the autonomous Parks and Wildlife Office, and Dioscoro S. Rabor, another founding father of Philippine conservation efforts.

Rabor fought for the recognition of the plight of the Philippine eagle at the world conference of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in Bangkok, Thailand. He succeeded when the IUCN – of which the Philippines is a signatory -- was declared the Philippine eagle an endangered species.

From 1969 to 1972, America's famed aviator Charles Lindbergh spearheaded a drive to save the bird, which he called as the “noblest flier.” Within this time frame, several helpful laws were passed.

During the time of the presidency of Fidel V. Ramos, he declared the bird – which is bigger than the American Bald eagle – as the national bird.  This brought the bird to the top of the priority list of Philippine wildlife conservation efforts.  If the national bird dies, so will all the country’s efforts at conserving its natural resources and treasures, Ramos said at that time.

The eagle center has been doing its best to educate the Filipino people as to the importance of the bird and its habitat.  Its facility was actually opened to the public in 1988 to raise awareness among those who visit the center.  Majority of its visitors are children on school-sponsored field trips.

“Many of these children came from all over Mindanao,” Salvador said.  “We use the opportunity in telling them the importance of wildlife conservation.  Our mode of dissemination ranges from providing lectures, slide and film presentations, to guide tours.” 

Many Filipinos – and some foreigners – were baffled: Why do we have an endangered Philippine eagle as the country’s bird icon? 

The Philippine eagle was formerly known as monkey-eating eagle (its generic name, Pithecophaga, comes from the Greek words pithekos or monkey and phagein meaning eater).  It was later renamed the Philippine eagle by Presidential Decree No. 1732 in 1978 after it was learned that monkeys comprise an insignificant portion of its diet, which consists mainly of flying lemurs, civet cats, bats, rodents, and snakes.

The eagle stands a meter high, weighs anything from four to seven kilograms and has a grip three times the strength of the strongest man on earth.  With a wing span of nearly seven feet and a top speed at 80 kilometers per hour, it can carry unsuspecting monkey and carry it off without breaking flight.

Unlike most animals and humans, Philippine eagles are monogamous and bond for life.  Once an eagle reaches sexual maturity – at around five years for females and seven years for males – it is bound for life with its mate.  They can be seen soaring in pairs in the skies.

The female eagle lays once every two years.  The breeding season ranges as early as July to as late as February.  During the breeding season, the eagles do aerial courtship and mate in the nest or near it.  Female eagle lays only one egg.  Both parents alternately incubate the egg for about 60 days, although the female spends more time incubating while the male hunts.

Upon hatching, the eaglet remains in the nest for about five and half months.  Once it fledges, the eagle parents will continue to look after its young for as long as 17 to 18 months teaching the young eagle how to fly, hunt, and to survive on its own.  The young eagle matures in about six years.

“The Philippine eagle is truly a Filipino pride,” said my nephew, Generoso Tacio, Jr.  After our tour, he added, “Now, I know why we have to protect and save them from disappearance in our land.”

 Aside from Philippine eagles, you can also see these birds at the center: black-and-cinnamon fantail, black-faced coucal, blue-crowned racquet-tail, brown tit-babbler, brush cuckoo, chestnut munia, cinnamon ibon, dark-eared brown-dove, eurasian tree sparrow, everett’s white-eye, glossy swiftlet, golden-bellied fly-eater, little spiderhunter, olive-backed sunbird, orange-bellied flowerpecker, rufous night-heron, silvery kingfisher, and stripe-breasted rhabdornis. -- ###