Philippine eagle Uswag found dead at sea off Cebu
MANILA, Philippines – A month after its release into the wild in Leyte, Philippine eagle Uswag was found dead at sea off Barangay Cawit in Pilar, Cebu.
Members of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), representatives from the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF), and volunteer fisherfolk retrieved the three-year-old raptor’s carcass on Saturday, August 3, in the waters of Pilar after 42 hours of search and recovery operations.
“Uswag was found floating along with sea debris with its GPS transmitter facing up and its miniature solar panels exposed to the sun,” PEF’s report read. “The body was already beginning to decompose.”
PEF director Jayson Ibañez received last Tuesday, July 30, a set of GPS readings that showed Uswag was at sea. Before that, on July 9, Ibañez received GPS readings that showed Uswag over the western slopes of Mount Pangasugan in Baybay City, Leyte.
On Wednesday, July 31, Ibañez and other PEF members flew to Tacloban City, Leyte, to arrange search and recovery operations, together with representatives from the regional office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Eastern Visayas.
The team started their search on Thursday, August 1, in Baybay City. On Friday, August 2, another set of GPS readings showed Uswag along the coast between the islands of Poro and Ponson in Cebu.
Around 3:30 pm on Saturday, a PCG member spotted Uswag’s body floating in an area where two types of sea currents meet. Fisherman-volunteer Mark Bryan Colminas took the body out of the water.
X-ray examinations on Sunday, August 4, showed no visible evidence of shooting, trauma, or bodily injury.
The full necropsy report has yet to be released by a team from the College of Veterinary Medicine at the Visayas State University (VSU).
The VSU team believes drowning may have been the cause of death. They estimated that Uswag must have died four to five days prior to retrieval.
PEF lamented Uswag’s death, saying that the eagle had already successfully hunted in the wild during the first few days of its release.
“Sadly, perhaps because of the rains and winds brought about by the southwest monsoon, eagle Uswag lost his flight bearings and got sucked in towards the sea,” the report read.
Uswag is the ninth Philippine eagle recorded to have crashed at sea since 1984.
The juvenile eagle was one of the two released in Burauen, Leyte, last June 28. It was conservationists’ hope that Uswag would breed with the released female eagle, Carlito, and reintroduce the species in the province.
Both Uswag and Carlito were rescued in Mindanao. They were the first pair released in Leyte for the reintroduction project of PEF and the DENR. Since Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) ravaged the province in November 2013, there had been no reported sightings of the majestic raptors there.
– Rappler.com