Eight observations on Philippine Eagles and their awesomeness
1)It used to be called the “Monkey Eating Eagle” so to help with its PR, since it is only found in the Philippines, they changed the name to Philippine Eagle (PE).
2)There are somewhere between 200-800 PEs in existence.
3)PEs live in the rain forest in Philippines and builds their nest in trees. But their rain forest has been about 95% cut down throughout the 20th century coinciding with the advent of chainsaws as opposed to man-powered sawing which was apparently pretty slow. No rain forest, no trees, no PE.
4)Conservation of PE, and animals in general, seems like its controlled by far left hippies, but it could just as easily be a topic for traditionalists, conservatives, and small government people.
It’s true that there were real needs of people, for wood, and for cleared space to farm, that led to the cut down of forests. But also it was government led and corrupt. The government had a monopoly on forests, took bribes from entities, and then gave those entities rights to harvest the land, and they then had an incentive to do so ASAP.
What is more conservative then conserving rain forests that have existed for millions of years?
5)PEs look like dinosaurs. Which I guess makes sense since eagles are called raptors, like the velociraptor, and evolved from dinosaurs.
6) The movie Bird of Prey is a documentary on PEs released in 2019 and has lots of awesome video of these birds and is worth watching
7) People are the most, and only, magnanimous predator.
Predators compete with other predators for resources like space, energy, food. It’s partly why there are so few apex predators. Each one needs a lot of space.
Humans are the only apex predator who could easily wipe out the competition, and to some benefit, but voluntarily restrain ourselves, sometimes at significant cost, to try and co-exist with other high level competing predators.
8)PEs are monogamous, pair bonding for life, raise their young together, and the mom PEs only lay a single egg every couple of years. These eagles can live into their 40s in captivity, probably less in the wild, but it still seems like quite a long eagle life.