Source : Minda News, 15 Jan '05
By : Tatit Quiblat / Philippine Eagle Foundation
  

In an uncanny sense of timing, Kabayan’s death is quickly followed by Pag-asa’s celebration. This just might save us from losing heart in this seemingly brutal business of ours. For just as we grieve over high-flying times at Mt. Apo that have ended too soon, we are reminded of unexpected small wonders that popped up to make flying possible in the first place.

Pag-asa’s Birth

We learned from the more senior members of our staff that though he is much celebrated now, fact is, we almost lost Pag-asa. Thirteen years ago, people like Dennis Salvador, Doming Tadena and Lito Cereño, who now head PEF and its various programs, were but first-time “fathers” who didn’t quite know what to do with the small hole that Pag-asa made on its shell on its 58th day of incubation.

Pag-asa was only the third fertile egg in their years of eagle breeding research. At that time, they didn’t know that after its first pip, a baby eagle takes about 36 hours to rest and gather strength before resuming work on its shell and breaking into the world. There was a bit of panic in the air, for all they knew was that the baby was silent and unmoving for 30 hours. Feeling both panicked and eager, the team, along with Dr. James Grier, who in 1992 was already a respected zoologist but like everyone else was a first-timer with baby Philippine Eagles, decided to help the chick out of its shell. “A Caesarean operation,” Cereño jokingly said.

The “Caesarean operation” was a big mistake. The operation hit some of Pag-asa’s blood vessels that had not yet come off the shell. “We feared his life was literally draining out of him,” Cereño recounted. They slowed down their work on the shell and hydrated the chick continuously by wiping him with cotton swabs dipped in water. Gradually, the vessels regained their color.

They didn’t know they were very lucky. They didn’t know they were assisting the chick too early and it was just getting its own body ready for the outside world. As fate would have it, they completely removed Pag-asa from its shell at the exact time that the last stage of its hatch process, the retraction of the yolk sac, occurred. Had they pulled him out before the sac retracted, Pag-asa would have died. Without knowing it, their timing was perfect.

They celebrated the miracle with wine and a lot of high-fives (the “apir,” as it was popularly called in 1992.)

Several chicks later

Several chicks later, Tadena assists baby eagles out of their shells with the expertise of a mother eagle. On November 23, 2002, Kabayan popped out of its shell without much difficulty. What made the chick extra special was that it came to be the “chosen one.”

In a span of ten years, not only had the PEF mastered the process of breeding and hatching these extremely rare birds, but years of hard work and painstaking research had put the end-all of captive-breeding programs within sight: release into the wild.

Kabayan was to be the first captive-bred Philippine Eagle to be returned to its natural habitat, in the hopes of complementing wild populations. From the time of his hatching, he was reared in isolation and prepared for his life in the wild. He was to be the key to the answers to several research questions: Will a captive-bred bird learn to hunt on its own? How will he find and establish his own territory? Will he find a mate? Where and how do we go about releasing him in the first place?

It took more than a year before we got ready to release Kabayan. By this time, new blood had been infused into the PEF staff to support its expanding scope of work. Biologist Camille Concepcion, a graduate of 2003, was a student of Field Team Coordinator Jayson Ibañez, who was mentored by PEF Science Director Dr. Hector Miranda, who was a colleague of eagle research pioneers Dr. Bob Kennedy and Dr. Grier. Truly, the work had spanned generations.

Concepcion, Kabayan’s hack attendant on his release day on April 22, 2004 said, “It seemed funny that my job was to let go of something that generations of PEF researchers worked so hard to get. But we all knew this is what we wanted to happen. It was an honor for me to be in the position of finishing what they started.”

For months, Concepcion and her colleagues in the Field Research team took turns weaving through dense Mt. Apo to look after their ward. They shook their heads in amusement when they saw Kabayan trying helplessly to keep his balance when, perhaps in his extreme eagerness to hunt, he held a rabbit in each of his talons. They rejoiced at every lizard or rat they saw him catch. They cheered him on in silence behind their observation blinds when he first attempted to attack a pack of monkeys (the monkeys won.)

Kabayan and the Experimental Release Project met an unexpected, premature end. But the experiment had achieved its purpose in that Kabayan did learn to hunt within nine months and we did get a feel of what the challenges were in releasing captive-bred birds to the wild. We learned how to do it, we can do it again. The work to preserve these precious Philippine Eagles continues.

Twin celebrations

For years, the first question visitors asked the staff at the Philippine Eagle Center was: “Where is Pag-asa?”. When Kabayan was born, and mainly due to the media exposure his benefactor Vice President Noli de Castro showered on him, the question quickly changed to “Where is Kabayan?”. Many were disappointed they couldn’t see him because he was reared in isolation, often hinting that their trip to the Center was ruined. Whenever this happened, Center staff quickly shot sympathetic looks at Pag-asa, as if to say “Ok lang, Pag-asa, number one ka pa rin sa amin.” (It’s okay, Pag-asa, you’re still number one.) A playful rivalry was brewing.

Pag-asa was the usher to that first phase of Philippine Eagle conservation work, when captive breeding was necessary to enable rapid population replacement of an even more rapidly depleted eagle population. Without Pag-asa, Kabayan would not have been able to fly into a new direction and show us that in time, we will be able to see these birds in the wild again.

The PEF staff is composed mainly of biologists. The few who do not have backgrounds in biology are by heart and osmosis (of the wealth of knowledge on wildlife around us), naturalists. Certainly, we understand the laws of life and nature: we can only do so much to dictate a living creature’s behavior. When the laws do apply themselves, as they did with Kabayan where no one among us is able to do anything about, we say they still bite.

But on January 15, there will be cake and candles and lots of kids to sing Pag-asa a Happy 13th Birthday. For though we are in grief, we know there is much to hope for, because sometimes, living creatures behave unexpectedly too, like little Pag-asa who sucked in his yolk sac just in time.