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There
is a long time since I have contacted you... since I arrived to
Ecuador I spent almost all the time in the field, watching the nests
and organizing the work here... And, I this seems to have been the
year of the trips... I received an award to go to Washington to learn
about Geographic Information System, that is so important now in
conservation. The course was developed by the Smithsonian Institute
and it was really productive... It only took almost 3 weeks, but it
was enough to encourage the people that had the telemetry equipment to
give us all the things that we needed... and I already have here the VHF equipment!! This is great because now we are going to be able
to answer some questions and to use some time to look for the PTT
(satellite transmitter).
With all those things, we are working at the same time with the people
at the coast in order to establish the new protected area. It is
incredible... all the people want to protect and to have another
alternative to the logging activities... if you knew how many people tried to do that... I hope that in this time we will be lucky.. that
area of the country really needs it.
Other news, in fact great news we have a new Harpy eagle chick in the
Amazon Basin.. it is only about 3 weeks old, and the place where it is
located is impressive... it is a jaguar path and a place where you
could see otter, monkeys, tapir, reasonably easily as well. It is a
very special place. The indigenous people there were completely
shocked, they wanted as much as us for this event to happen. When the
new harpy was born, they use all their tools to send the news to our
offices in Quito. You should have seen just how excited they were!!
There are not a lot of reports about what is happening in this first
season of a Harpy eagle’s life, so we are doing a big effort to guess what is
happening there with the young bird now.
Things are working, Jemima, and this make us feel more energetic. I
hope that someday you could come and visit us, visit our people, our
project and, of course, our Harpy eagle nests!!!
....And here is the latest news (received January 2008)
Now and until September 2008 we are being financed by Ecofondo / Fondo Ambiental, from Ecuador. The Cofan, Kichwa and Secoya indigenous groups at Cuyabeno Reserve in eastern Ecuador, together with Afro-Ecuadorians and country people at the west are now working for the conservation of Harpy Eagles and in education. To date, we have 14 located nests, but at the moment we are not able to monitor all of them, simply because we don’t have enough people to do that! And those places are usually too far away. Every week, six nests are now being supervised by our team and parabiologists. Moreover, rangers from the Natural Reserve of Cuyabeno go with us to learn and participate in the work. They will be the inheritors with local communities of the Harpy Eagle mission in the future.
Recently, we re-released in the forest a harpy eagle (named Cocaya) that was captive in a community house, at a place that was out of our program action area. We had to build a new nest for the eaglet because the man cut down its nest tree to take the chick. After two months in captivity, the parents arrived to the new platform to feed Cocaya, and right now she is flying in complete freedom. Now, we include this new area, and the man who captured the eagle became a perfect coordinator of the harpy eagle work for this indigenous territory.
We have organized different workshops with communities, teachers and different institutions to show the objectives of our program, so that those entities are integrated.
Today, the Environmental Ministry accepted a Ministerial Agreement of the Ecuadorian government to be responsible for including the Harpy Eagle Strategy, which was defined along two workshops. So the Education Program can now include the Harpy Eagle as a tool to improve the knowledge about the environment. Thanks to that we can remind people of an eagle that was almost unknown to the general population.
In addition, we are actually monitoring a Morphnus guianensis nest that is recently arranging the sticks to build their nest. We don’t know if the breeding attempt will succeed, but if it does we will try to trap one of the individuals to tag it with a PTT /GPS transmitter, supported by Fundación Terra Natura / Alicante University (Spain).
We have new data about the dispersal movements of a young juvenile, thanks to the PTT-GPS transmitter tagged on it… in more than a year and a half… it moved just 300 meters around the nest tree!! Yes, the harpy eagle has one of the most delaying tactics to develop of the raptor natural history world.
During last year, we had published a book called “Cunsi Pindo: La señora de los monos / Cunsi Pindo: the mistress of the monkeys”. It is a bilingual publication (English-Spanish) that describes part of our work during seven years with the harpies in Ecuador as a scientific report of our results. Sales of that book are helping to support the work with the eagles and communities.
To improve and stimulate scientific research on raptors in Ecuador, we are organizing an International Raptor and Conservation Congress in Quito (April 1st to 5th). We will have significant researchers with us sharing their knowledge throughout workshops and major conferences. As an example, we will have the presence of the coordinator of the Philippine Eagle and the main researchers of Condor projects (Andean condor and California condor). Besides that, the person who is arranging the Neotropical Raptor Guide will be here to show during a workshop how to identify raptors and their age as another expert will show how to work with PTT transmitters… You will find more information in this web site: www.congresorapaces.org
If you want to know something else about the Harpy Eagle Program in Ecuador, you could visit: www.harpiaecuador.org that is our web page.
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