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Christian Daug whistles with all of the spirit he can muster. “The female and male have been perched there yesterday,” he says, pointing to a lifeless tree amid the ocean of flora that smothers the tallest mountain on the Philippine archipelago.
He whistles once more as we glance out over the jungle from a picket commentary submit. This space is without doubt one of the final remaining strongholds of Pithecophaga jefferyi: one of many world’s largest and rarest eagles. Measuring a few metre in top when perched, with a wingspan that may attain greater than two metres (6.5ft), it’s identified regionally because the “monkey-eating eagle”. The big raptors prey totally on macaques, but in addition feed on pythons, chickens, cats and canine.
Daug is one among a gaggle of native tribespeople who’ve joined the Philippine Eagle Basis (PEF) on its monitoring and analysis mission in Mount Apo pure park on Mindanao island. With solely an estimated 392 breeding pairs remaining, scattered in fragments of jungle over three closely logged Philippine islands, each nest web site and hen is treasured.
“I want I might whistle like that,” says senior PEF biologist Rowell Taraya. “We’ve been monitoring the pair close to right here for 2 years, however nonetheless didn’t spot their nest,” he says as we trek to the following submit. “They aggressively guard their territory – which is big, each pair wants no less than 8,000 hectares [20,000 acres] – so they’re actually laborious to observe.”
The hours cross, with no signal of an eagle. With daylight fading, we arrange our hammocks and sleep.
“New day, new techniques,” says Taraya at daybreak. “No eagle can resist this.” He holds up a picket cage with a two-metre-long python inside. Monkeys rustle within the cover above. Lastly: “Eagle!” Taraya whispers, as a raptor swoops above and lands on a department a number of hundred metres away. “Only a bit extra endurance and we’ll have the ability to get a great take a look at her,” he says.
However then, our luck modifications. Taraya picks up his walkie-talkie to reply a name. It’s the military, warning {that a} group of militants have been noticed close by. “Every little thing’s OK,” he says, turning off the radio, “however we have to pack up and get out of right here fairly rapidly.”
Mindanao island has a status for kidnappings for ransom – which have generally resulted in beheadings when calls for weren’t met. It’s simply one of many intimidating challenges that PEF faces in its mission to save lots of the Philippines’ sacred eagles from extinction.
“Glad you made it out alive,” says a grinning Jayson Ibañez, director of analysis and conservation on the PEF, on the fringes of Davao Metropolis, capital of Mindanao. “However we even have greater issues than the militants.”
In addition to the creep of long-running conflicts and militarisation within the area, the eagle centre is coping with the increasing metropolis. “Within the Fifties, after we began, this web site was once within the jungle. However as you most likely observed in your approach right here, we’re virtually consumed by town’s enlargement now,” says Ibañez.
“We’ve given up on the captive breeding programme right here, as they develop into habituated to human presence,” he says. Regardless of the workers’s greatest efforts to keep away from human “imprinting”, the eagles they launched stored flying again to human settlements. “We even had one case the place one of many younger birds we launched flew to a village and tried to hold away a three-year-old youngster.”
Within the jungle outdoors Davao, the brand new Philippine eagle breeding centre is underneath building, buried in deep undergrowth. It would quickly home eagles, which the centre hopes will produce offspring appropriate for rewilding. “Right here, it’s far sufficient away from human exercise, so it’s extra appropriate for breeding and hopefully finally releasing eagles which aren’t imprinted,” says Ibañez.
The enlargement of human exercise has already pushed Philippine eagles near extinction: they’re categorised as “critically endangered” by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature, with a lowering inhabitants on the final evaluation, carried out in 2016. The first threats are deforestation for mining, timber and agriculture, and patches of searching – together with by farmers who blame the birds for carrying off younger livestock. All through Mindanao’s central highlands, rising human settlements may be seen patchworked amongst rainforest ecosystems, the place forests, villages and farmland hug the hillsides.
In Guilang-guilang village, Bukidnon province, we’re met by Atu Honorio Sumohoy, the native Bukidnon tribe chief. His village is one among a number of working with the PEF and different conservation organisations on “sacred nature-based options”. The technique goals to concurrently bolster safety of Indigenous land rights, cultural practices and biodiverse ecosystems, to guard essential habitats inside Indigenous lands.
The Bukidnon folks contemplate the eagle as sacred, and Sumohoy carries out a ritual killing of three cockerels as a sacrifice to “ask permission from the forest spirits for [the visitors’] acceptance right here – particularly of the eagle which is taken into account the messenger of the creator,” says Ibañez.
“Kalumbata (the eagle) is the messenger of God,” Sumohoy says later, chewing on the boiled cockerel. “Our ancestors forbid the searching of Kalumbata as a result of if it occurs, one life may even be misplaced in the neighborhood in trade for the killed eagle.”
Dr Jessica Lee, the pinnacle of avian species programmes and partnerships at Mandai Nature, a conservation group in Singapore, has been working carefully with the PEF since 2019. She says working with native communities just like the Bukidnon, on “sacred nature options” can lead to a “triple mutual profit: species protected, habitat protected, neighborhood profit”.
“It’s simply as pretty to know the eagles are protected and revered within the jungles right here as it’s seeing native girls main the native Philippine Eagle forest guard programme for instance – getting paid for safeguarding the forest and the eagle – and their lifestyle,” she says.
Quickly, the PEF hopes to increase its initiatives, with plans to translocate a number of breeding pairs of eagles to neighbouring Leyte island in June. Translocations are dangerous, says Dr Munir Virani, chief government of the Mohamed Bin Zayed Raptor Conservation Fund, which is supporting the transfer, however the organisations hope they will set up one other viable inhabitants.
“We’re dwelling in an period of huge ecological pressures and speedy local weather change, so naturally it requires a brand new set of responses,” Virani says. “We’re in a state of affairs the place we should be daring. Time isn’t on the eagle’s facet.”
Again in Mount Apo pure park, a rain cloud fills the valley under, signalling that it’s virtually time to go away – till somebody calls: “Search for, proper above. Eagle!”
“You’ve acquired a Queen of England haven’t you?” says 23-year-old biology graduate and PEF volunteer Celline Tadeo, as we watch the resident feminine hovering again to her residence. “And we’ve acquired our queen of the jungle.”
Discover extra age of extinction protection right here, and observe biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the newest information and options
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