23rd eagle hatches at RP Eagle Center

A BABY Philippine Eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) hatched in Davao City at 6:12 p.m. on Sunday, March 7.

The chick, weighing 137.5 grams, is the 23rd eaglet bred and born under the Philippine Eagle Foundation's (PEF) conservation breeding program, the first after two years of quiet.

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"Relieved, and very happy," said Anna Mae Sumaya, curator of the PEF's breeding program, when asked how she felt hours after the hatching. "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."

Sumaya and 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 Philippine Eagle Center - the breeding, research and rehabilitation facility run by PEF to save the endangered Philippine eagle from extinction.

The PEF is responsible for producing eagle icon, Pag-asa, in 1992 and 21 other Philippine eagles at the center. Its breeding program is intended to supplement eagle populations in the wild by replacing those lost to hunting and by reintroducing captive-bred birds to vacant habitats and those occupied by unpaired wild eagles.

Assisted hatching

Chick number 23 needed some assistance to come out.

Twelve hours had passed since the chick was expected to pip through its shell, so Sumaya decided to intervene. She poked a hole through the egg shell 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 Chick number 23 was completely free.

The chick is the offspring of natural eagle pair Tsai and Princess Maasim.

Baby Philippine eagles are about the size of a baseball and come out fluffy white before growing their distinctive brown feathers in about a month. They reach their full height of about three feet within six months from birth.

The newly hatched chick is currently fed with small amounts of ground meat every four hours.

New chapter

PEF Executive Director Dennis Salvador believes this hatching ushers in another 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 habitat," he said.

PEF learned a lot from the test release of eagle Kabayan in 2004.

Though that release ended tragically in Kabayan’s accidental electrocution, the PEF found out that captive-bred birds learn to hunt on their own, among other findings that also saw the foundation adapting release protocols used with other species to the Philippine eagle in the country’s context.

Kabayan’s and the succeeding releases, however, opened up more challenges for the organization.

The PEF noted that with captive-bred eagles and even with wild eagles rescued and released back to their natural habitats, the freed birds 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 to persecution, as in the case of eagle Kagsabua, which 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 continues to grow in good stead, Chick number 23 will be released to the wild.

The PEF is looking for partners to support the release program.

The partner will have the privilege of naming the eagle chick.