Harpy Eagle Press Releases
Fondo Peregrino – Panamá, in partnership with ANAM, is expanding the reach of its Harpy Eagle conservation project by exporting three juvenile Harpy Eagles to Belize for the first time. Three of the seventeen Harpy Eagles that hatched in captivity during 2002 at the Neotropical Raptor Center, located in (side) the City of Knowledge, former Fort Clayton, will be transported to Belize on 19 March 2003.
“The opportunity to export young Harpy Eagles to Belize for release is something we had hoped to accomplish by 2006,” stated Magaly Linares, Acting Director of Fondo Peregrino-Panamá. “Accomplishing it in 2003 is a credit to the excellent team of biologists at Fondo Peregrino-Panamá and to the excellent support we have received from ANAM, Panama's Environmental Authority.”
“This project is a fine example of the international partnerships that are needed to conserve biodiversity of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor,” said Ricardo Anguizola, Administrator of ANAM and President Pro-temp of the CCAD, Central American Commission for Environment and Development.
With the collaboration of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment of Belize, and Las Cuevas, the British Natural History Museum’s field station in Belize, a Harpy Eagle release site has been established in lowland forest of western Belize. Earlier this year, biologists from Fondo Peregrino – Panamá prepared the site for the releases and trained two local volunteer biologists from Belize. Before their release, two small radio transmitters will be placed on the birds to locate them when they are free in the forest. The biologists will spend the next six months using these transmitters daily to track the eagles, providing food and protection while the eagles go through a natural process of learning to hunt and adjust to their environment. To evaluate the release process biologists will collect information about the birds’ behaviors, movements, and survival.
One of the three chicks is not releasable and will be sent to the Belize Zoo. Such unreleasable birds are still committed to a very important mission in life: they become part of an environmental educational program and help spread the message of conservation and protection of the environment. The other two chicks, a male and a female, who will be five months old at the time of the departure from Panama (March 19th), will be set free one month after their arrival in Belize.
The complicated process of releasing captive raised Harpy Eagles back into the wild began with releases in Panama in 1998 and is still being developed. The captive breeding success at Fondo Peregrino-Panama’s new Neotropical Raptor Center has surpassed expectations and provides the opportunity to expand releases into Belize. If captive breeding production continues at this level then officials from Fondo Peregrino-Panamá have indicated that future releases of Harpy Eagles in Belize, and other Central American countries are possible. One of the goals of the program is to restore the species within the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.
The eagles will be four or five years old before they reach maturity and begin to reproduce naturally in the wild. Once independent of the release site and foraging on their own, the greatest threats to their survival will be human persecution. The eagles may be refitted with radio tags that are tracked by satellite. Using this space-age tool allows biologists to follow the eagles’ movements and survival to maturity to make sure that the investment of time, effort, and money will result in successful species restoration. Species restoration takes many years to accomplish and officials from Fondo Peregrino-Panamá anticipate working on this goal for the next 20 years or more.
These activities are an initiative of The Peregrine Fund/Fondo Peregrino – Panamá, with the support of the National Environmental Authority of Panama, Belize Zoo, Biological Station Las Cuevas, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment of Belize, Programme for Belize, and the British Forces. Fondo Peregrino-Panamá is supported, in part, by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID has provided economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for more than 40 years.
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