Folklore binds tribe to protect the PH eagle
Published Apr 22, 2018 12:05 am
By Zea C. Capistrano
FOREST GUARDS — For the tribal council leaders and members of the Sinabadan Tribal Council of the Bagobo Tagabawa tribe in Barangay Sibulan in Davao City, protecting the Philippine eagle needs the revival of the indigenous culture and practices that cares for the environment. In this photo (from left to right): Datu Jovito Dolauta, Datu Hernan Ambe, Datu Erano dela Peña, Purok Leader Lindaoan Olen, and Delfin Emao pose outside the tribe's training center in Sitio Kabarisan in Barangay Sibulan. (Zea C. Capistrano)
Davao City – Once there was a hunter named Datu Pawa.
He was on his way home from a pangayam, the local term for hunting, with his captured baboy ihalas (wild boar) slung over his broad shoulders.
But unbeknownst to the great hunter, several hundreds feet up in the air, the great Banog Talutong had his piercing blue eyes trained on him and his catch.
And before Datu Pawa could make a run for it, mighty Banog had already gone on a blinding descent, and, with great strength, snatched the hunter and his catch in one felled swoop before transporting her prey to a nest perched just outside a cave.
In this photo taken by Ronald Krupa on August 22, 1981, then bird keeper, Domingo Tadena, poses outside the Malate Medical Clinic in Toril district, Davao City. Tadena sustained injuries after a Philippine eagle attacked him. (Photo courtesy of Domingo Tadena)
In the Bagobo Tagabawa’s dialect, they call the Philippine Eagle, Banog Talutong. Banog is the tribe's name for eagle, while Talutong means monkey, which was observed to be one of the favored prey by the Philippine eagle.
Gathering his senses, Datu Pawa found himself sharing the nest with Banog Talutong’s newborn. And since escape was impossible because the nest was perched high up on the cliffs of the mountain, the hunter could not but share his new abode with the eaglet, eating whatever Banog Talutong brought to feed her young.
It was in this time of captivity, said to have lasted for months, that Datu Pawa was able to forge a rare, solid bond with the nurturing young eagle.
And so the time came when the eaglet was ready to spread its wings. So when the juvenile eagle propped himself for his flight, Datu Pawa was able to climb on his back, soaring out of his captive nest and eventually making it back to his tribe.
Back with his own people, Datu Pawa showed his gratitude to the young eagle by naming his son Banog. And Datu Banog would go down in Bagobo Tagabawa folklore as the one who founded the villages of Tudaya, Kapatagan, Binaton and Sibulan which lie at the foot of Mount Apo.
And for the leaders of these villages, Datu Banog will be forever shrined as possessing the fortitude, the leadership and the strength of his father and the eagle he was named after.
For the Bagobo Tagabawa tribe, the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) is the king of all birds, the “pangulok manok tot puwalasan” or the king of the birds.They believe that the Philippine eagle was tasked by the god, Manama, to watch over the first Gomanan (fortress) in Mt. Apo.
The story of DatuBanog and DatuPawa is an old tale shared by the tribal elders of the BagoboTagabawa tribe in Barangay Sibulan, a village where two nesting sites of a pair of the critically endangered Philippine eagles were found.
Based on the Philippine Eagle Foundation’s (PEF) record of eagles fitted with GPS trackers, the mortality rate is estimated at 43 percent with four out of 10 birds dying due to hunting.
Sad fate
However, as the folklore brings, tradition over the need to hunt the Philippine eagle may never be stamped out.
That is why, tribal leaders have also imposed restrictions among their own folk on the conduct of these hunts for the Philippine eagle.
To preserve the biodiversity, indigenous communities have advocated that only old hunting practices be adopted to ensure that juvenile creatures will not be killed, according to Delfen Emao, one of the members of the Sinabadan Tribal Council in the village.
Traps, he said, are being measured to target only the adult. Even pregnant creatures are spared, he said. The indigenous people also hunted only during off season breeding.
“The practice before was really sustainable,” he said.
But today, Emao said deforestation, the cash-based economy, and “so-called development” have significantly affected the biodiversity endangering the population of the Philippine eagle.
“People hunt even the juvenile animals for money,” he lamented.
Perils of modernization
Datu Hernan Ambe, the chairperson of the Sinab’badankagTugal’lankaSibulan (Unity of Elders in Sibulan), the organization that oversees the management of the 10,000-hectare ancestral domain of the BagoboTagabawa tribe, said modernization had also taken its toll on the preservation of the culture of the tribe that naturally protects the forest.
He said they have been faced with the great challenge of finding second liners who will follow the footsteps of the elders.
While they look at the elders with utmost respect, Ambe said, the youth now prefer to look for jobs in the city and build on a career. Without the guidance of tribal elders, the value of preserving the forest covered in their ancestral domain has also been threatened.
Guarding the forest
To help address the problem, Ambe said the tribal council created a cooperative that will take care of the livelihood in the communities, and will encourage residents to become forest guards.
They now plant organic cacao trees and coffees as part of their agro-forest program, and are eyeing to plant trees on denuded areas with the help of more than 200 forest guards patrolling Mt. Apo.
Emao, who also serves as a forest guard, narrated that they would hike for days to monitor and guard the protected areas. There are 10 villages that are in the protected areas in the ancestral domain in Barangay Sibulan.
Preserving the specie
“We remove traps that might endanger the wild animals. We release trapped animals and we maintain a nursery where we get our seedlings during our tree planting activities,” he said. They also confiscate illegally cut trees and report it to authorities. But Emao said there is still a long way to go to fully implement environmental laws that protect the wildlife and natural resources.
As of March 31, 2018, there are 303 existing Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) covering 596,229 hectares in the country. An MPSA is an agreement between the government and a contractor to mine a certain area. Areas covered by the MPSA include those islands where Philippine eagles are found and are also located in ancestral domain areas.
Dennis Salvador, the executive director of the Philippine Eagle Foundation, said the country has gone “leaps and bounds” in acquiring knowledge to successfully breed the Philippine Eagle.
There are currently 32 Philippine eagles at the center located in Malagos district here, with 14 females and 18 male. Out of these, 13 were turned over from the wild and 19 are from captive breeding.
However, he said it is the resilience of a tribal community over threats of forest destruction that can save and preserve the habitat of the Philippine eagle and the ancestral domain of the lumad.
Salvador said conservation efforts need empowered communities so that residents can make “sound decisions.”
Ambe admitted that with a lot of challenges faced by conservation efforts, the culture of the indigenous tribe holds a significant role in the preservation of the biodiversity – the home of the lumad and the Philippine eagle.
The tribal elders, he said, are trying to organize the youth and make them active in conservation efforts, but Ambe admitted that cultural preservation remains one of the difficult tasks ahead for their tribe. “As a people, we have a big responsibility. We might not know how deforestation would affect us later on, but it definitely will,” the chieftain stressed.
For now, the elders hope that through retelling the great story of how the bond between the eagle and DatuPawa led to the foundation of their village, the next generation of lumad will take on the fight for the survival of the king of the birds as their own.
FOREST GUARDS — For the tribal council leaders and members of the Sinabadan Tribal Council of the Bagobo Tagabawa tribe in Barangay Sibulan in Davao City, protecting the Philippine eagle needs the revival of the indigenous culture and practices that cares for the environment. In this photo (from left to right): Datu Jovito Dolauta, Datu Hernan Ambe, Datu Erano dela Peña, Purok Leader Lindaoan Olen, and Delfin Emao pose outside the tribe's training center in Sitio Kabarisan in Barangay Sibulan. (Zea C. Capistrano)
Davao City – Once there was a hunter named Datu Pawa.
He was on his way home from a pangayam, the local term for hunting, with his captured baboy ihalas (wild boar) slung over his broad shoulders.
But unbeknownst to the great hunter, several hundreds feet up in the air, the great Banog Talutong had his piercing blue eyes trained on him and his catch.
And before Datu Pawa could make a run for it, mighty Banog had already gone on a blinding descent, and, with great strength, snatched the hunter and his catch in one felled swoop before transporting her prey to a nest perched just outside a cave.
In this photo taken by Ronald Krupa on August 22, 1981, then bird keeper, Domingo Tadena, poses outside the Malate Medical Clinic in Toril district, Davao City. Tadena sustained injuries after a Philippine eagle attacked him. (Photo courtesy of Domingo Tadena)
In the Bagobo Tagabawa’s dialect, they call the Philippine Eagle, Banog Talutong. Banog is the tribe's name for eagle, while Talutong means monkey, which was observed to be one of the favored prey by the Philippine eagle.
Gathering his senses, Datu Pawa found himself sharing the nest with Banog Talutong’s newborn. And since escape was impossible because the nest was perched high up on the cliffs of the mountain, the hunter could not but share his new abode with the eaglet, eating whatever Banog Talutong brought to feed her young.
It was in this time of captivity, said to have lasted for months, that Datu Pawa was able to forge a rare, solid bond with the nurturing young eagle.
And so the time came when the eaglet was ready to spread its wings. So when the juvenile eagle propped himself for his flight, Datu Pawa was able to climb on his back, soaring out of his captive nest and eventually making it back to his tribe.
Back with his own people, Datu Pawa showed his gratitude to the young eagle by naming his son Banog. And Datu Banog would go down in Bagobo Tagabawa folklore as the one who founded the villages of Tudaya, Kapatagan, Binaton and Sibulan which lie at the foot of Mount Apo.
And for the leaders of these villages, Datu Banog will be forever shrined as possessing the fortitude, the leadership and the strength of his father and the eagle he was named after.
For the Bagobo Tagabawa tribe, the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) is the king of all birds, the “pangulok manok tot puwalasan” or the king of the birds.They believe that the Philippine eagle was tasked by the god, Manama, to watch over the first Gomanan (fortress) in Mt. Apo.
The story of DatuBanog and DatuPawa is an old tale shared by the tribal elders of the BagoboTagabawa tribe in Barangay Sibulan, a village where two nesting sites of a pair of the critically endangered Philippine eagles were found.
Based on the Philippine Eagle Foundation’s (PEF) record of eagles fitted with GPS trackers, the mortality rate is estimated at 43 percent with four out of 10 birds dying due to hunting.
Sad fate
However, as the folklore brings, tradition over the need to hunt the Philippine eagle may never be stamped out.
That is why, tribal leaders have also imposed restrictions among their own folk on the conduct of these hunts for the Philippine eagle.
To preserve the biodiversity, indigenous communities have advocated that only old hunting practices be adopted to ensure that juvenile creatures will not be killed, according to Delfen Emao, one of the members of the Sinabadan Tribal Council in the village.
Traps, he said, are being measured to target only the adult. Even pregnant creatures are spared, he said. The indigenous people also hunted only during off season breeding.
“The practice before was really sustainable,” he said.
But today, Emao said deforestation, the cash-based economy, and “so-called development” have significantly affected the biodiversity endangering the population of the Philippine eagle.
“People hunt even the juvenile animals for money,” he lamented.
Perils of modernization
Datu Hernan Ambe, the chairperson of the Sinab’badankagTugal’lankaSibulan (Unity of Elders in Sibulan), the organization that oversees the management of the 10,000-hectare ancestral domain of the BagoboTagabawa tribe, said modernization had also taken its toll on the preservation of the culture of the tribe that naturally protects the forest.
He said they have been faced with the great challenge of finding second liners who will follow the footsteps of the elders.
While they look at the elders with utmost respect, Ambe said, the youth now prefer to look for jobs in the city and build on a career. Without the guidance of tribal elders, the value of preserving the forest covered in their ancestral domain has also been threatened.
Guarding the forest
To help address the problem, Ambe said the tribal council created a cooperative that will take care of the livelihood in the communities, and will encourage residents to become forest guards.
They now plant organic cacao trees and coffees as part of their agro-forest program, and are eyeing to plant trees on denuded areas with the help of more than 200 forest guards patrolling Mt. Apo.
Emao, who also serves as a forest guard, narrated that they would hike for days to monitor and guard the protected areas. There are 10 villages that are in the protected areas in the ancestral domain in Barangay Sibulan.
Preserving the specie
“We remove traps that might endanger the wild animals. We release trapped animals and we maintain a nursery where we get our seedlings during our tree planting activities,” he said. They also confiscate illegally cut trees and report it to authorities. But Emao said there is still a long way to go to fully implement environmental laws that protect the wildlife and natural resources.
As of March 31, 2018, there are 303 existing Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) covering 596,229 hectares in the country. An MPSA is an agreement between the government and a contractor to mine a certain area. Areas covered by the MPSA include those islands where Philippine eagles are found and are also located in ancestral domain areas.
Dennis Salvador, the executive director of the Philippine Eagle Foundation, said the country has gone “leaps and bounds” in acquiring knowledge to successfully breed the Philippine Eagle.
There are currently 32 Philippine eagles at the center located in Malagos district here, with 14 females and 18 male. Out of these, 13 were turned over from the wild and 19 are from captive breeding.
However, he said it is the resilience of a tribal community over threats of forest destruction that can save and preserve the habitat of the Philippine eagle and the ancestral domain of the lumad.
Salvador said conservation efforts need empowered communities so that residents can make “sound decisions.”
Ambe admitted that with a lot of challenges faced by conservation efforts, the culture of the indigenous tribe holds a significant role in the preservation of the biodiversity – the home of the lumad and the Philippine eagle.
The tribal elders, he said, are trying to organize the youth and make them active in conservation efforts, but Ambe admitted that cultural preservation remains one of the difficult tasks ahead for their tribe. “As a people, we have a big responsibility. We might not know how deforestation would affect us later on, but it definitely will,” the chieftain stressed.
For now, the elders hope that through retelling the great story of how the bond between the eagle and DatuPawa led to the foundation of their village, the next generation of lumad will take on the fight for the survival of the king of the birds as their own.