Pythons for bait and dodging militias: on the trail of the rare ‘monkey-eating’ eagle
Christian Daug whistles with all the spirit he can muster. “The male and female were perched there yesterday,” he says, pointing to a dead tree amid the sea of flora that smothers the tallest mountain on the Philippine archipelago.
He whistles again as we look out over the jungle from a wooden observation post. This area is one of the last remaining strongholds of Pithecophaga jefferyi: one of the world’s largest and rarest eagles. Measuring about a metre in height when perched, with a wingspan that can reach more than two metres (6.5ft), it is known locally as the “monkey-eating eagle”. The enormous raptors prey primarily on macaques, but also feed on pythons, chickens, cats and dogs.
Daug is one of a group of local tribespeople who have joined the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF) on its monitoring and research mission in Mount Apo natural park on Mindanao island. With only an estimated 392 breeding pairs remaining, scattered in fragments of jungle over three heavily logged Philippine islands, every nest site and bird is precious.
“I wish I could whistle like that,” says senior PEF biologist Rowell Taraya. “We’ve been monitoring the pair near here for two years, but still didn’t spot their nest,” he says as we trek to the next post. “They aggressively guard their territory – which is huge, every pair needs at least 8,000 hectares [20,000 acres] – so they are really hard to monitor.”
The hours pass, with no sign of an eagle. With daylight fading, we set up our hammocks and sleep.
“New day, new tactics,” says Taraya at dawn. “No eagle can resist this.” He holds up a wooden cage with a two-metre-long python inside. Monkeys rustle in the canopy above. Finally: “Eagle!” Taraya whispers, as a raptor swoops above and lands on a branch a few hundred metres away. “Just a bit more patience and we’ll be able to get a good look at her,” he says.
But then, our luck changes. Taraya picks up his walkie-talkie to answer a call. It’s the army, warning that a group of militants have been spotted nearby. “Everything’s OK,” he says, turning off the radio, “but we need to pack up and get out of here pretty quickly.”
Mindanao island has a reputation for kidnappings for ransom – which have sometimes ended in beheadings when demands were not met. It is just one of the intimidating challenges that PEF faces in its mission to save the Philippines’ sacred eagles from extinction. ***
“Glad you made it out alive,” says a grinning Jayson Ibañez, director of research and conservation at the PEF, on the fringes of Davao City, capital of Mindanao. “But we actually have bigger problems than the militants.”
As well as the creep of long-running conflicts and militarisation in the region, the eagle centre is dealing with the expanding city. “In the 1950s, when we started, this site used to be in the jungle. But as you probably noticed on your way here, we are almost consumed by the city’s expansion now,” says Ibañez.
“We’ve given up on the captive breeding programme here, as they become habituated to human presence,” he says. Despite the staff’s best efforts to avoid human “imprinting”, the eagles they released kept flying back to human settlements. “We even had one case where one of the young birds we released flew to a village and tried to carry away a three-year-old child.”
In the jungle outside Davao, the new Philippine eagle breeding centre is under construction, buried in deep undergrowth. It will soon house eagles, which the centre hopes will produce offspring suitable for rewilding. “Here, it is far enough away from human activity, so it’s more suitable for breeding and hopefully eventually releasing eagles which aren’t imprinted,” says Ibañez.
The expansion of human activity has already driven Philippine eagles close to extinction: they are categorised as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with a decreasing population at the last assessment, carried out in 2016. The primary threats are deforestation for mining, timber and agriculture, and patches of hunting – including by farmers who blame the birds for carrying off young livestock.
Throughout Mindanao’s central highlands, growing human settlements can be seen patchworked among rainforest ecosystems, where forests, villages and farmland hug the hillsides.
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In Guilang-guilang village, Bukidnon province, we are met by Atu Honorio Sumohoy, the local Bukidnon tribe chief. His village is one of several working with the PEF and other conservation organisations on “sacred naturebased solutions”. The strategy aims to simultaneously bolster protection of Indigenous land rights, cultural practices and biodiverse ecosystems, to protect crucial habitats within Indigenous lands.
The Bukidnon people consider 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 here – especially of the eagle which is considered 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 hunting of Kalumbata because if it happens, one life will also be lost in the community in exchange for the killed eagle.”
Dr Jessica Lee, the head of avian species programmes and partnerships at Mandai Nature, a conservation group in Singapore, has been working closely with the PEF since 2019. She says working with local communities like the Bukidnon, on “sacred nature solutions” can result in a “triple mutual benefit: species protected, habitat protected, community benefit”.
“It’s just as lovely to know the eagles are safe and respected in the jungles here as it is seeing local women leading the local Philippine Eagle forest guard programme for example – getting paid for protecting the forest and the eagle – and their way of life,” she says.
Soon, the PEF hopes to expand its projects, with plans to translocate several breeding pairs of eagles to neighbouring Leyte island in June. Translocations are risky, says Dr Munir Virani, chief executive of the Mohamed Bin Zayed Raptor Conservation Fund, which is supporting the move, but the organisations hope they can establish another viable population.
“We’re living in an era of massive ecological pressures and rapid climate change, so naturally it requires a new set of responses,” Virani says. “We’re in a situation where we need to be bold. Time is not on the eagle’s side.”
Back in Mount Apo natural park, a rain cloud fills the valley below, signalling that it is almost time to leave – until someone calls: “Look up, right above. Eagle!”
“You’ve got a Queen of England haven’t you?” says 23-year-old biology graduate and PEF volunteer Celline Tadeo, as we watch the resident female soaring back to her home. “And we’ve got our queen of the jungle.”
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We’re in a situation where we need to be bold. Time is not on the eagle’s side
Dr Munir Virani