Dennis Salvador and Roberto P. Puentespina, Jr. have one thing in common. Both are trying to save the endangered Philippine eagle from extinction. Salvador is the executive director of the Philippine Eagle Foundation while Puentespina is the man behind the famous interactive bird show in Malagos Garden Resort.
Curiously enough, both the Philippine Eagle Center and the Malagos Garden Resort are located in the same place: Calinan. In fact, they are more than just a kilometer away from each other.
At the Philippine Eagle Center, more than two dozen of Philippine eagles have been raised as part of foundation’s breeding program. Most of them are being induced to breed in captivity. Pag-asa is one of its noted attractions; it made the headline around the world as the first tropical eagle conceived through artificial insemination.
Salvador – which means “saviour” in Spanish – firmly believes the fate of the Philippine eagle is associated with forest conservation. A pair of the critically endangered bird needs at least 7,000 to 13,000 hectares of forest as a nesting territory, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “The forest is its only habitat,” said Salvador, who was named one of the outstanding young men (TOYM) in 2000 for leadership in wildlife conservation. “Without the forest, the species cannot survive over the long term.”
Aside from deforestation, another threat to the survival of the country’s bird icon is hunting. “Some do it because of ignorance but most, I believe, because of arrogance,” Salvador pointed out. “People believe they can get away with it so they do it. This of course it aggravated by poor enforcement of the law and clear lack of political will.”
Salvador – whose academic background is agricultural economics (from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños) and agribusiness (from the Ateneo de Davao University) – joined the eagle foundation in 1987. “It was a very tumultuous period for the organization,” he recalled.
At that time, the eagle camp – as it was then known – was located at barangay Baracatan in Toril. Salvador was in-charge with the eagles’ foods. “Every week, I had to go down to the town and purchased native chickens and goats,” he said. “I loaded them up to the roof of the public jeepney then riding along with them all the way to Baracatan. But the jeepney terminal was about two kilometers away from the camp so I had to carry the chickens on my back while pulling the goats.”
Since insurgency was at its peak then, they were often isolated and left alone as neighbors would go to evacuation centers. “At night, we would dread hearing the dogs barking because that meant that rebels were just around the corner,” he said.
Another pressure they had to face at that time was from a government agency. “They were hot on our heels trying to their best to take the eagles from us and relocating the entire operation to a state university in Luzon,” Salvador said. “In the end, they simply stopped funding the project.”
Media attention and support from the local government unit of Davao City kept the agency from taking the eagles “so they just left us on our own.” It was until a couple of howitzer shells that fell some 50 meters from its facility that they finally decided to leave Baracatan and move to Malagos.
In those days, there were only six of them in the technical team, including three from the government agency. When the said agency stopped funding the program in 1987, the three personnel also left.
Without any financial assistance, the group persisted. “We were basically operating on nothing,” Salvador said. “We had to sell some of our personal belongings just to feed the eagles. We waived our salaries for over a year. We solicited from local businesses to make ends meet. In addition, we had to work under adverse conditions as we were often caught in the middle of the crossfire between the military and the rebels operating in the Mount Apo area.”
Despite all these setbacks, Salvador and his team continued. “Many of the technical problems we encountered from the beginning were resolved from constant experimentation, from trial and error, but always using the rigor of sound scientific research,” he said.
In 1992, Salvador became the executive director of the foundation. It was on this year that foundation was able to breed an eagle in captivity. “The success of the birth of Pag-asa attracted biologists and other young graduates into the program. They were amazed to find out that what we were doing was not the way they were featured in the movies or television channels,” he said. “Working with eagles was hard, dangerous work.”
Salvador says with pride of what he and his team have accomplished through the years. “The success of captive breeding of the eagle Pag-asa brought the country’s attention to the plight of the species and was probably instrumental in turning the species into our national bird,” he stressed.
Salvador has gone a long, long way. He was born in Manila but grew up in Davao. He remembered well the time when he spent his summer vacation at his father’s hometown in Morong, Rizal. He went to the fields, climbed trees, and fished in the river. When the family moved to Mindanao, he would tag along on his father’s duck hunting trips where he learned the rudiments of responsible gun use and ownership.
“My own love affair with the eagles started only when I began working with them,” he admits. “The eagles are such charismatic creatures that once you start working with them, they seem to grab hold of you and then you realize that you’ve spent a great deal of your life with them.”
On the other hand, Puentespina is a veterinarian by profession. He is more popularly known as Doc Bo. He is the third of five Puentespina siblings, owners of the Malagos Garden Resort. One of the resort’s attractions is the full-production interactive free flight bird show that he started in 2002. The show is performed only during Sundays.
Dr. Bo never dreamed of becoming involved with birds. In fact, he was destined to become a lawyer. But fate intervened. When he entered the University of the Philippines in Diliman as an AB Economics student in 1981, he joined rallies.
“My family in Mindanao expected much from me, the reason why I was sent to the best state university,” he said. “The parliament of the streets was not the way to go.” And so he decided to shift course, went to the UP at Los Baños and took up veterinary medicine.
But how he got interested in birds is an interesting story in itself. In 1988, while doing a research for a Parasitology subject, he visited the Philippine Eagle Center where he met a dedicated bunch of workers determined to study the eagle.
“As a young veterinarian I was challenged by them to work with injured birds,” he admitted. “Part of the rehabilitation is to exercise and make the bird fly again. You learn to bond with the birds, and this is the basic principles of falconry.”
Dr. Bo is also into rescuing birds. “I assist in rescue mission for injured Philippine eagles in far flung areas in Mindanao,” he revealed. “I use any available resources and contacts, and travel anywhere – even in high-risk areas – by land or air to get them.”
Dr. Bo is so engrossed with his work that at one time, he almost missed taking his wife to hospital to give birth, as he was working late with Philippine eagle cases. “When I got home, I barely had enough time to rest when she complained of birthing symptoms and had to rush to the hospital,” he recalled. “She gave birth to our third child soon after.”
Meanwhile, the Philippine eagles that have been rescued continue to rise, according to the Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB), a line agency of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). From January to August 2011, for instance, six Philippine eagles were rescued and retrieved.
“Rescuing these birds of prey requires urgency to avoid inflicting further harm and the prompt response is imperative to the eagle’s well-being and general condition,” BMB said in its website. “Improper handling techniques and complications brought about by mishandling may arise from these incidents. After such efforts, the birds are nursed, cared for and undergo a rehabilitation process to enable them to assume their pre-captive states prior to their release.”
According to the BMB, before an eagle is released, a veterinarian first asses the bird’s general condition, its feeding habits, survival and hunting abilities. “An extensive medical check-up is integral to any release activity,” the bureau said.
But not all rescued or captive eagles can be released back into the wild. “Girlie,” the resident eagle at the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center is a perfect example. “She was hit in the right eye with a slingshot that made it difficult for her to survive in the wild,” the BMB reported. “She also had been unable to produce viable eggs for a number of years.”
The Philippine eagle, the country’s bird icon, must be saved before it’s too late. If only they could talk, these would be their call:
“I have watched forests disappear, rivers dry up, floods ravage the soil, droughts spawn uncontrolled fires, hundreds of my forest friends vanish forever and men leave the land because it was no longer productive. I am witness to the earth becoming arid. I know all life will eventually suffer and die if this onslaught continues.”
