LEYTE, Philippines – Before Dr. Bayani Vandenbroeck lifted the camouflage tarp strung on the branches of trees, he cautioned the small group of the press to turn off their lights.
At 4:30 am, a team of conservationists started to capture the two raptors and prepare them before their release into the wild in the afternoon. It was the culmination of a work that lasted a decade.
Beyond the tarp was the hack site of Philippine eagles Uswag and Carlito.
It was imperative to secure the raptors before day breaks, said Vandenbroeck. If they can see humans, they could attack.
For two weeks, Uswag and Carlito have been living inside confined pens made of cyclone wire walls on elevated land in the Anonang-Lobi mountain range in the remote village of Kagbana in Burauen, Leyte. There were logs inside the pens where the eagles could perch. Caretakers slid down rabbits through food chutes to feed the raptors.
Outside, the wild and untouched forests of Kagbana stretched out. The sky was overcast. It had been raining the past days.
Dominic Tadena, the senior animal keeper of the team, moved in the dark along with Vandenbroeck and the biologists. There were quick shuffles of the feet, heavy breathing, and whispered instructions. Someone turned on a flashlight, illuminating the silhouette of Carlito perched on a wooden trunk inside the pen, her wings spread wide open. The eagle flapped her wings a few times before Tadena got ahold of her talons.
“You can get in,” Tadena told the crew. The group slid inside quietly, mindful of any noise or distractions they could accidentally make.
He was holding the eagle by its talons. The bird flexed the full length of its wingspan. The feathers on its crest stood erect, looking like a crown. It continued to flap its wings, which Vandenbroeck gently closed once the bird was caught. Ron Taraya, the field biologist who sported a tattoo of the majestic eagle on the side of his neck, secured the head of the bird between his left arm and torso to put on the leather hood.
Inside the hack site next to Carlito’s, Uswag made a somber sound that rose and cascaded. For a bird of prey, their sound wasn’t menacing. It called.
“Tape,” Tadena ordered.
Carlito’s talons were bound together by masking tape. They have to tape the talons, explained Vandenbroeck, because the eagle could latch on to someone and not let go.
Vandenbroeck wrapped the tape around Carlito’s feet while Taraya held the bird upright, firmly hugging it to prevent it from spreading its wings. Uswag continued to make the same sound that descended like a string of pearls.
Julia Lynne Allong, one of the biologists who took care of the two raptors since they had been held captive in Davao City on Mindanao island, held Carlito in her arms. Uswag was spunkier than Carlito, and it took a long while before he was caught.
The crew went through the same motions with Uswag as they did with Carlito, securing the leather hood on his face and the masking tape around his talons. Soon, Safina Ibañez, a 15-year-old volunteer for Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF), was cradling Uswag beside Allong.
Vandenbroeck checked for their vital signs. They stretched each wing separately to count the feathers, revealing the eagles’ white underside.
When the veterinarian deemed Uswag fine, Taraya installed a global positioning system or GPS tracker on Uswag’s back. He burnt the loose ends of the straps with a lighter. Carlito, on the other hand, had a high heart rate. In captivity, Philippine eagles were taught to be averse to humans, and at the time, the hack site was filled with them. Later on, PEF director Jayson Ibañez would come up to the hack site and lead some of the people out to help the eagles calm down.
The team had to wait a while before installing the tracker on Carlito. In the wild, some of the eagles with trackers were observed to include the antenna when preening, said Vandenbroeck. Both Carlito and Uswag got their own trackers.
The device, which weighed less than 3% of the birds’ weights, would help the scientists and conservationists monitor their movement over vast tracts of land and mountain forests for years to come.
A month later
It did. But not in the way everybody expected.
A month after they were released, Uswag’s GPS readings showed the bird at sea. Search and recovery operations ensued. Fishermen volunteered; the Coast Guard helped.
Around 3:30 pm on a Saturday, the bird was found dead floating off Pilar, Cebu, where two currents met. There was no visible sign of shooting, injury, or bodily trauma. Experts believed the bird must have lost his bearings when the rain caused by the southwest monsoon came pouring down. He crashed at sea and drowned.
In conservation work, many things can be controlled by humans, but many things are also beyond our control.
But in the immediate aftermath of Uswag’s death, conservationists and the public who eagerly awaited the birds’ release were bound together by a universal experience: grief.
“We’re all devastated. We had high hopes for Uswag. I was stunned when I saw the carcass. I was hoping it was all just a bad dream,” Ibañez said. – Rappler.com
Reporter/writer: Iya Gozum
Production specialist: Errol Almario
Video editor: JP San Pedro
Producer: JC Gotinga
Supervising producer: Beth Frondoso
Graphic artists: Andoy Edoria, Marian Hukom, Alyssa Arizabal