Two Philippine Eagles Die on Power Lines Three Days Apart in Salay and Arakan

The Salay eagle

Residents of Sitio Panghaon in Barangay Guinalaban had watched a large raptor flying over the area on September 30. The next morning, between nine and ten o'clock, a farmer found it dead on the ground beside an electric post. A team from the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office in Gingoog City, led by CENR Officer Noe Calipusan, responded with staff of the Mt. Balatukan Range Natural Park and recovered the carcass.

The DENR regional office moved the bird to the Bukidnon Provincial Zoo in Malaybalay and turned it over to the Philippine Eagle Foundation on October 2. The foundation's veterinarian, Dr. Danielle Kirsten D. Pasion, examined a female under five years old that weighed 5.25 kilograms with a wingspan of about 76 inches. Staff named her Salay.

The necropsy found burn marks on the pad of the left foot, an enlarged heart with blood pooled in the sac around it, and ruptured internal organs. Decomposition had set in and limited what the examination could show, but the foundation said the findings were consistent with electrocution as the suspected cause of death.

The Arakan eagle was also shot

On October 4, Arakan municipal environment officer Jimmy Montero reported a second dead eagle near an electric post in Barangay Libertad. The foundation named her Libertad. Dr. Bayani Vandenbroeck conducted her necropsy and confirmed electrocution. Burns ran along the flight feathers of the left wing and the middle digit of the right foot, and the right atrium of the heart had ruptured.

The examination also recovered two airgun pellets, one lodged at the far end of the left radius and ulna and one at the far end of the right tibia. The wound on the left wing was only a few days old. The foundation concluded that she had been actively shot and hunted shortly before her death. It described the shooting as a significant concurrent finding but not the primary cause.

The Cotabato provincial government and provincial police have opened a hunt for the shooters in Arakan and the neighboring town of Magpet. Both DENR Region 12 and DENR Region 10 asked residents to report eagle sightings so staff can keep watch on birds that stray near settlements and lines.

Libertad is close to the Mt. Mahuson nesting territory, which the foundation first recorded in 1995 and which has produced at least six successful nestings. The adjacent Mt. Sinaka territory is one of the smallest known nesting habitats for the species and has hatched at least 11 young over the years of monitoring.

A fourth death on the wires since 2004

The foundation counts these as the third and fourth Philippine eagles killed by electrocution since 2004. One earlier victim was Kabayan, a captive bred eagle released into the wild. Another was a two year old bird that died in Arakan in 2018 after touching an exposed 220 volt secondary line.

That 2018 death led to the country's first powerline retrofitting project. The foundation, the Cotabato Electric Cooperative and Suntory of Japan, working through the Asian Raptor Research and Conservation Network, insulated 3 kilometers of a planned 4.5 kilometer stretch at Mt. Sinaka in two phases, in 2023 and 2025. Libertad died outside the retrofitted section.

In its October 8 account of the two deaths, the foundation quoted Dr. Andrew Dixon of the Mohammed bin Zayed Raptor Conservation Fund, who has worked on saker falcon electrocutions in Mongolia. "What makes them particularly dangerous for eagles is that they have a large wingspan," he said. Engineer Imad Kanouni of Midsun IKM in Austria, which makes insulating covers, told the foundation that "these accidents are 100% preventable."

Request for a joint assessment in Misamis Oriental

Jayson Ibañez, the foundation's director for operations, wrote to DENR Region 10 regional director Paquito Melicor Jr. on October 5 asking for a joint site assessment. The letter proposes eagle field surveys in the forests of Guinalaban in Salay and Dampil in Lagonglong, together with an audit of the distribution lines around them.

The two towns have a history with the species. In 1984 an adult male was rescued in Lagonglong and later sired six eaglets in captivity. In 1985 a young eagle crashed into the sea off Dampil and was released after recovery. The foundation believes the forests above both towns still hold breeding pairs.

"The next step is to bring conservationists, engineers, electric cooperatives, national government agencies, local governments and communities together to identify high risk areas and act before another eagle is lost," Ibañez said on October 9.

The case for mandatory retrofitting

The foundation is using the two deaths to press for a National Bird Act that would require power companies, the Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission to insulate or redesign lines in known eagle range. It also wants GIS mapping of the riskiest line segments so that cooperatives can prioritize work.

Fewer than 400 pairs of Philippine eagles are thought to survive in the wild, and the breeding season is about to begin. Young birds like Salay and Libertad are the ones most often lost to wires because they range widely before settling into a territory of their own.

Readers who come across a grounded or injured eagle can contact the nearest DENR community office or the Philippine Eagle Foundation in Davao City. The foundation asks that no one attempt to handle the bird.