Search for a Philippine Eagle

The Philippine Eagle is an incredible creature. My spirit animal is an unidentified and mutable hawk, perhaps a Philippine Eagle. It was originally called the monkey-eating eagle because monkeys are among the endless list of prey for this enormous and unique bird. It is one of the most endangered animal species in the world, with estimated numbers between 180 and 500, most of which live on the southern island of Mindanao. Old growth forests, clean water and air, and prey are key to its survival. Through Roselynne, I was able to connect to Haribon Foundation, a 40-year old organization that does environmental conservation in many areas and facets from a small but well-funded office in Manila. While I was with my family in Aringay I was invited to join a Philippine Eagle search team headed to Aurora National Park on the east coast.

... and you are?

I left Aringay around 4am to make sure I could make it across to the east coast of Luzon in time to meet Haribon Foundation's Philippine Eagle team. Caught a bus headed to Carmen with the help of Efran, a helper who is caretaker of Dani's property in Aringay. I arrived in Carmen earlier than expected, but somehow got stuck waiting for more than four hours on the only bus headed east to Cabanatuan. The driver must have been obsessive-compulsive or something, because there's a difference between waiting for a bus to be full and waiting until even the aisles are full. Just out of town there were plenty of people waiting on the side of the road who would have been happy to fill the aisles had we left with them open two hours earlier. Instead, he passed them by, and they have to wait for the night bus or the next day's bus. I thought the driver's mental issues might have ruined my opportunity to join the team but they turned out to have troubles of their own. In the end, the team from Manila arrived in Cabanatuan just before I did, so I was able to ride with them the rest of the way. Turns out the "team" was simply my friend and 'in' to the organization, Kevin, and me. The driver would drop us off and return to Manila.

We left Cabanatuan in the afternoon with only 4 hours of daylight left, and I was pleasantly surprised that they planned to take the winding mountain road through the middle of Aurora National Park. The previous two days dumped heavy rain on the road and there were dozens of very big landslides, out of which more than a hundred bulldozers carved new roads to connect the old roads on either side of the slide. About midway through we had to stop and wait for half an hour until the road was re-carved in front of us. Had we arrived earlier, there would have been many more stops to wait for road clearings. Our vehicle was a new, raised Nissan pickup with all the bells and whistles. Off-road tires, four-wheel drive, river snorkel, giant clamp and rolled twine/deep sea fishing reel, and we had to use almost every one of them to pass the road to our coastal destination town of Baler. The road was long, rough, winding, muddy, and treacherous. But the scenery was beautiful at every turn. We arrived well after dark and were forced to take a hotel room that night.

The next morning, we traveled back towards the mountains on another road, and started hiking to base camp from Barangay Real. Our guide was seriously strong, young, and marked by the red mouth I would see for the next few weeks on the vast majority of people. There's a nut here called "Bili" or "Beetle" nut, or "Moma" that people chew to get the narcotic buzz that characterizes it. It's really hard and ruin's people's teeth, but way better than alcohol in terms of community damage. The hike was 13km, mostly flat but muddy. There's a saying that says you never cross the same river twice. Supposed to mean something about not making the same mistake twice or something naive like that. We crossed the same river almost 20 times. Sometimes waist-deep. I lost count at 11 and didn't want to know how many after that. Both Kevin and my feet were full of deep blisters by the end (on top of my still healing infections), and our feet were saturated with water. I was walking in 'river' sandals. Doesn't keep you dry when you submerge them every 5 minutes in mud or water hiking through tropical rainforest.

Thirteen kilometers into the forest is a small village with a seemingly out of place full cement basketball court in the center. The small elementary school room is where we slept that night, and I was learning some Tagalog from the posters on the walls. The team waiting for us in the village were part of the DENR's Eagle Watch Team for Luzon. Dan and his wife and two other men were chilling in the shade with 6-8 men who were to be our guides and porters for the Eagle survey.

It was right on the edge of the big river we crossed so many times the day before. We left our things and some of us left to head up the mountain to scope out a few viewpoints of a mountain that was suspected to have a Philippine Eagle pair. In the few hours we were gone, the remaining guides had built a row of 6 beds out of bamboo, with plastic woven bags that hung between two poles each like 6 stretchers. It was covered by a tarp hung over a bamboo pole lashed high between two trees. I was impressed.

I had hiked in with more than 5 kilos of extra vegetables to make my vegetarian diet a little easier for the week. In general, whoever was cooking started with a vegetable dish and then added meat at the end, so all I had to do was get them to portion out a bit for me before they added meat. The morning after we arrived from Baler, we left the village and hiked back along the trail for 30 minutes till we reached a small hut owned by one of the guides. Much of the food we ate was gathered from the forest. There are edible ferns and bananas, cassava, these red-fruited trees with edible cores, and lots of other foods growing around the area.

Most every day, we would get up early, eat, go up the mountain and spy the mountain opposite us through binoculars. We saw many kinds of eagles that are often rare to see, but in the end, we didn't spy any Philippine Eagles. Philppine Crested Serpent-Eagles, Gray-headed Fish Eagles, Honey Buzzards, Rufous-bellied Eagles, and possibly even a Changeable Eagle. On our hikes, we saw a monitor lizard, a huge abandoned hawk's nest, heard monkeys and hornbills, and a few other birds and reptiles.

I didn't like the energy of this crew. Part of it was because I couldn't understand most of what the guides said, nor did they understand what I said. Something just didn't feel right amongst the environmentalists either. Like they were just tolerating us youngin's (I'm 24, Kevin is 21), because we represented Haribon, a potential major source of funding for future projects. They also made a show of catching a paper error for someone else who had received a payment for two separate jobs logged at the same time (double charge).

On top of that, they had no respect for nature at all. They didn't mind the chainsaws logging illegally very close to our viewpoint. They burnt all of their plastic from junk food (pieces always wrapped individually=tons of plastic). Everyone washed themselves, their clothes, and their dishes with copious amounts of soap in the river we drank from. They hunted down and cut the head off of every snake they saw. On the last day we went to a different vantage point on another hill. When we arrived, they cleared the vegetation all around the hilltop with machetes. Dozens of banana trees, some hardwood trees, young and old bamboo, and all the grasses and vines in between, gone. The goal was to make a clear view for the afternoon, but they went overkill. I actually felt the fear and pain in the plants as they were being hacked to death everywhere around me. All for only three hours' watch for an endangered creature that depends on trees. Most Filipinos follow the typically human philosophy that nature is either useful or in the way. But I expected environmentalists to think just a little differently. All of these practices are common for poor villages just getting by, but shouldn't be for those who claim to protect the environment. How do they think the Eagle became endangered in the first place? Overlogging and pollution of the air and water and needless overuse of the wildlife the Eagle depends on for food killed off the eagles, and here they are doing the same. I tried to explain this to them, but even those who spoke good English could only stay quiet and stare back, with a look in their eyes that said, "You're right, but I don't know any other way."

Kevin hikes slower than most, especially while nursing really bad blisters, but always with a smile. Out of a sense of companionship and responsibility, I always hiked behind Kevin at his pace. Coming down from the cleared hill on the last day, the guides and DENR Eagle Watch Team left us behind on a complicated and very unclear trail. I felt it was rude and irresponsible of them. And despite getting a little lost twice, the combination of GPS and Kevin's memory got us there, no thanks to the 6 guides who went up and down the hill with the DENR.

Our impromptu shelter was tied together using this rope material like hardy plastic bag. Instead of untying your knots and re-rolling your string/rope, you just cut the plastic with a knife and leave the pieces everywhere. The stuff must be cheap. But then again, the porters had room and there must have been money for tons of junk food and cigarettes and this plastic rope, but not another sweater, or lasting (and cheaper) nylon or cotton rope. Sometimes things that are done simply don't make sense to health, longevity of resources, or finances. And yet, somehow it seemed easier than the pragmatic thing. This is a common pattern here. Most of the time I can keep my mouth shut and simply accept how people have adapted without judgement because I don't know their lives or why they make their choices. But these environmentalists seemed irresponsible and nonsensical.

We actually had to leave 3 days short of our 10 day planned stay because there was a report 150km north of us of a Philippine Eagle skeleton that had recently been caught in a wild boar hunter's trap and died. The Eagle Watch Team was requested to confirm what the DENR in the area had found. The hike out of the area was the same as the hike in. Beautiful but wet. I was able to talk and connect a little with one of the DENR men whose English was better than the others, but it didn't shake my feeling from the last week.

One of the things I've been pondering a lot this year is the motivation behind my environmental work. It was a thought process reignited by some lengthy discussions with Roselynne. Why, in the scheme of the short history of life on this planet does protection of specific species and ecosystems matter? One of the forces of nature that can erase large portions of organisms to make way for new evolutions is a virus. Is the human race simply a profound virus? Yes it is. Is it possible that environmentalists, in preparation for this transition of age and energy predicted to happen 12-21-12 or whenever, are an mutation to the human virus that will shift our coexistence with nature? Yes. Do I think this sort of mutation is possible in humans? No. We are doomed to grow in numbers and destructiveness and the resources simply will not support us. Arguably, science and humans began their death-dance when humans used tools from nature to manipulate their surroundings to support their lifestyle. Is this very act of taking things found in nature and turning them into something useful the act that doomed humans and so much of the life nature produced? We are spending all of this time studying ecosystems, trying to find what we think is balanced, protecting specific plants and animals simply because we like them. Tigers and orchids and Philippine Eagles are cool after all. But we are claiming what nature should be, like we know what animals and plants are essential to protect a "valuable" or "beautiful" or "delicate" ecosystem. Our discovery of tools was also a natural evolution. We are PART of nature, and PART of a global ecosystem. Most of the other calculations and studies have no room for humans. How can we objectively impose a moral good vs bad or natural vs indigenous label on something we are also a part of. We will always make the final decision to support ourselves over nature. That's simple survival.

Our very beginning is not coexistence but exploitation. When we used tools to make life easier for ourselves, we had free time enough for art, music, language, and cultural development. Is it even possible to create without destroying? Every piece of art, every musical instrument, everything we use for anything was stolen by us from the world around us to suit our purpose. What about compiling rocks from the river into a pattern in the grass? What about taking dead sticks and grasses and turning them into baskets or bowls or spoons or simply fire to cook and stay warm? Is this still destruction of something? Of an ecosystem? Sure, it's only a small destruction. But many small destructions in the same place add up to a hell of a lot of destruction.

If environmentalism is essentially cleaning up messes we have made, work that vainly and naively attempts to change human nature, to stop us from using ingenuity or tools at all, then why try? It's a losing battle right? Even a dedicated group of environmentalists can't change human nature, and they must themselves destroy things to accomplish their goals (tools, wood, plastics, gasoline, etc...) So, why try? For now, I get to spend lots of time in the forest, amongst all of the life I care about. I clean up messes and protect life because nature is beautiful and it makes me happy. It gives me purpose and life, but I too must destroy to do this. How much destruction went into the production and transportation to get my survival knife into my hands for a specific purpose: to cut and destroy for survival? Ultimately my decision to do environmental work is a selfish, hedonist decision because I only do it because it makes me happy. Not because I am entirely selfless and would rather give my entire soul to the protection of things labeled naturally beautiful by humans.

Humans are natural. Our destructive nature and existence will kill us off eventually, and life will evolve and move on without us. So, maybe I have found the answer to the dilemma I had posted earlier this year. I don't need to reconcile environmentalism and music in some sort of quid-pro-quo compromise. Maybe I should simply live for myself and be selfless where it will spread within days or weeks, not generations or eons. Maybe I should build relationships because they make for good energy; connect myself and my surroundings through selflessness. Perhaps the small victories that could be won for environmentalism are not worth the pain and effort; instead I should play music and beauty for its simple, momentary existence. I'll let you know how it all unfolds.