MAITUM, SARANGANI— Farmer Gibson Badal on Tuesday got the surprise of his life when he saw a large bird in his farm in Barangay Batian here.

As he came closer, the bird, about a meter tall and with blue-gray eyes, did not move an inch. It appeared weak, he said. The farmer decided to bring the bird back to his home in the same village.

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The bird turned out to be a Philippine Eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi), a bird-of-prey found in the country’s mountainous rainforests and once a prized catch for hunters. The Philippine Eagle has since been declared an endangered species because of its dwindling population.

Upon the suggestion of his neighbors, Badal, 26, said he decided to sell the bird.

But then a resident of another village, who was visiting Barangay Batian on Tuesday, warned Badal it was unlawful to sell Philippine Eagles.

“The bird is a protected species,” Alver Caasi, a friend of Badal’s neighbor, said. “I told them they will face the full force of the law if they are caught selling the eagle.”

He said the bird appeared to have been weakened by hunger because when it was fed with chicken, it managed to consume half in minutes. Caasi said it took the eagle another day to finish the chicken.

On Tuesday, Maitum Mayor Alexander Bryan Reganit sent a team to Batian to secure the eagle from Badal’s care.

Reganit also notified the Philippine Eagle Center in Davao City, whose personnel accompanied the team from Maitum town and brought the raptor to the center.

Edgar Calderon, park maintenance foreman of the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office in Maitum, said the eagle is a juvenile and estimated to be a year old.

He said it could have strayed from other eagles in the forested area of the town, particularly Mt. Busa, and its nest could be within a 5-kilometer radius from where it was found.

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Jayson Ibanez, Philippine Eagle Foundation conservation director, said it was not the first time that eagles were seen in the village. He said he saw a pair in Batian, which is within the Mt. Busa complex, when he visited the village in 1996.

Mt. Busa, which straddles the towns of Maitum, Kiamba and Maasim, was declared a key biodiversity area and an important bird area in 2001. —ALLAN NAWAL

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