Philippine Eagle and Nation Face Mounting Troubles in Countryside

For four years, Bernardino Salarza has watched troubles beset his nation--and its most endangered species.

Salarza, 36, has watched the decline at his wildlife retreat in Mt. Apo National Park here on Mindanao Island.

He has seen the spectacular Philippine eagle, which many Filipinos regard as a national symbol, shot and killed by starving tribal hunters, and he has seen loggers illegally stripping the rain forests--depriving the eagle of its habitat and at the same time threatening entire villages with floods and landslides encouraged by deforestation.

In recent months, Salarza has seen the Communist insurgency creep ever closer, and as rebel and government troops alternate on the offensive, his wildlife retreat has been trapped in the cross fire. This has made it necessary for him to prepare to move.

Now the eagle is at the center of another of the Philippines’ problems. Politics and bureaucracy are holding up development in many key areas, and the eagles, Salarza told a recent visitor, are facing starvation. The government of President Corazon Aquino, which has been funding the eagle conservation project here, has delayed the delivery of money to provide food for the eagles, apparently because of political squabbling over who should direct the project.

‘The Poor Filipinos!’

“My God,” Salarza said, “I think to myself sometimes, the poor birds! But then I think, no, the poor Filipinos!”

Ron Krupa, 39, a Chicago-born American who has spent the last 10 years here on the eagle project and is its technical director, put it like this:

“The eagle is the storyteller. It is telling the story of the Philippines today because it forces us . . . to deal with the bureaucracy, with the insurgency and, now, with politics. Dealing with the Philippine eagle isn’t just a life’s experience. It is life.”

Nature could not have provided a more striking subject. The Philippine eagle has a wingspan of more than 6 feet, stands 3 feet tall and weighs about 15 pounds. It ranks among the largest of all eagles, and it is made all the more striking by its huge plumed head.

It defends up to 40 square miles of jungle, and when the bird numbered in the thousands, in the pre-colonial days when there were 60 million acres of virgin Philippine forest, there was ample nesting and feeding ground. But now, after decades of exploitation and uncontrolled development, there are just 2 million acres of forest. The number of eagles has declined to fewer than 300.

Project Set Up in 1979

In 1969 the government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, recognizing that the eagle was in danger of becoming extinct, established the conservation project. But little was done until 1979, when Krupa arrived and helped set up the semi-private conservation and breeding project on Mt. Apo.

Krupa, relying more on personal experience than his unfinished college education in Illinois, assembled a staff of Philippine experts and undertook to save both the eagle and the remaining forest land.

Last year his staff started an adopt-a-nest program in Mindanao’s most remote regions. Natives are paid $50 if they lead the staff to an eagle nest containing an egg. There are larger rewards--up to $100 larger--if the tribe protects the egg until it hatches and then sees to it that the eaglet safely leaves the nest.

“Protecting the nest means protecting miles and miles of forest around it from illegal logging activities,” Krupa said. “We’ve already located four nests through the program, and that means dozens of square miles of forest. It’s grass-roots ecology.”

Krupa’s group has been practicing grass-roots science as well. Under the direction of technicians like Bernardino Salarza, the program has, for the first time ever, bred Philippine eagles in captivity.

Refused to Concede Failure

After years of trying, the technicians finally found two compatible birds last December. The fertilized egg they produced died in early January, but Krupa refuses to concede that it was a failure.

“I knew that scientifically the chances of bringing this egg through were less than 20%,” he said. “My God, we were the first in the world to get a fertilized egg from a Philippine eagle bred in captivity. It’s not a failure. It’s another step in the right direction.”

The breeding part of the program is now the subject of political controversy. New officials in the government’s Department of Natural Resources propose to transfer the program to a campus of the University of the Philippines near Manila. There, they say, are better facilities and better trained scientists to oversee the program.

In Salarza’s view, such a move would destroy the program.

“Be practical,” he said. “We are the ones who started this, and now that they know it’s highly successful, they want it. They want to take credit for it.

‘All of Us Will Walk Out’

“But these people have no real experience. We are the ones who have been living with these eagles. . . . If the breeding component is taken away from here, the entire project will collapse, and all of us will walk out en masse.”

As it is, Salarza said, neither he nor the eight other technicians in the project have been paid for the past four months because the government has not released the budgeted money. There is little money left for the eagles’ food, and he and Krupa are beginning to believe that the department is trying to starve them and the eagles into submission.

The moving force behind the proposal to move the program is a department undersecretary, Celso Roque, who resigned as president of a private wildlife conservation foundation to join the department after President Aquino took office two years ago.

Roque has insisted in interviews with the local press that the proposed move is not politically motivated. He says the program has shown too little success under Krupa and his Filipino managers and should be turned over to academics and scientists.

Krupa and his staff bristle at the charges.

Experience Counts

“I don’t care how many degrees you have or how many institutions you belong to, you simply can’t know anything unless you experience it,” Krupa said.

Even if the eagles are not forced to move to the campus, they will have to move. The decision was made last year after a mortar shell just missed the cages containing the dozen eagles that the program maintains at its camp here on Mt. Apo.

“We are caught in the middle,” Salarza said. “The eagles are in the cross fire.”

Aware of the danger, the city of Davao has donated several acres of protected jungle. New cages and a tourist center are being built. The eagles are scheduled to be moved there in June.

As Salarza sees it, finding a solution to the insurgency will be almost as difficult as saving his eagles.

“To save the eagle, the increasingly poor Filipinos must have the means and the will to take care of their environment,” he said. “In the same way, the government cannot solve this insurgency situation unless we Filipinos help the government and the military, and that will not happen unless the government takes care of its people.”