Swaddled in a sniper-style ghillie swimsuit, Gabriela Tavera watched from the shadows because the blue-gray blur of the Harpy Eagle swooped in for the kill. Inside seconds, the eagle’s monumental talons had eviscerated the opossum that Tavera had simply launched. The conservation biologist was wrestling with pangs of guilt over sacrificing one animal to feed one other, however one thing modified when the raptor mounted her in its fearless, obsidian gaze. “I’d been an emotional wreck and was questioning the dwell feeding,” she says. “However at that second, I noticed it was for one thing a lot larger.”
Taveras was feeding the chicken as a part of a challenge to which she and her colleagues had devoted a number of grueling years: an effort to return a pair of rescued Harpy Eagles to the wild. In September 2023, their perseverance paid off with the primary such rehabilitation of the world’s strongest eagle in Bolivia—a triumph that, at occasions, appeared unlikely.
Balefully lovely with its tyrant’s-crown crest, smoky plumage, and colossal claws, the Harpy Eagle as soon as occupied an unlimited vary that stretched unbroken from the tropical lowland forests of southern Mexico to northern Argentina. An apex predator perched precariously on the high of the meals chain, the species was by no means very considerable; a breeding pair would possibly want 20 sq. miles or extra of wholesome forest to search out ample prey and websites for nests, which they construct within the cover of the tallest timber. As agricultural growth and selective logging razed its dwelling forests in Central and South America, and persecution by people adopted in its wake, the species was among the many hardest hit and the primary to vanish. Listed as vulnerable by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature, the raptor has already misplaced round 41 percent of its historic habitat and is regionally extinct throughout a lot of its former distribution.
In Bolivia, one of many few South American nations nonetheless missing a census of the species, the Harpy Eagle’s standing stays unknown. “We imagine their inhabitants has declined, however with out an estimate, we don’t know what number of are left,” says Kathia Rivero, curator of zoology on the Noel Kempff Mercado Museum of Pure Historical past.
It was logging of the large kapok timber that cradled their nests that led to the 2018 rescue in Bolivia of two unrelated Harpy Eagle chicks only a month aside. Roque and Luna, because the female and male nestlings had been named, had been dropped at a wildlife rescue heart within the metropolis of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and slowly nursed again to well being.
The middle’s chief biologist, Raul Rojas, had spoken of returning the birds to the wild—a difficult and dear endeavor that had been achieved with rescued Harpy Eagles elsewhere in South America however by no means tried in Bolivia. Nevertheless, the challenge stalled in 2020 when Rojas died of COVID-19 through the pandemic. As time slipped away and the eaglets grew, essential survival expertise went undeveloped and their habituation to human contact elevated. The slender window for rehabilitation was quickly closing. “Lots of people thought it was a misplaced trigger, and there are by no means any ensures with rehabilitating wildlife,” Rivero says. “However a few of us nonetheless thought it was value a attempt.”
Rivero consulted with raptor rehabilitation specialists and assembled a workforce of collaborators, funders, and volunteers. Among the many latter group was Tavera, who had beforehand labored on a conservation program for the endangered Andean cat. “I’d by no means labored with birds earlier than, however the state of affairs with the eagles broke my coronary heart, so I signed up immediately,” she says.
In 2021 the eagles had been transferred to Bioparque Curucusí, a zoo outdoors the town. They had been housed in a big flight enclosure secluded inside a fraction of rainforest so they may construct the muscle tissue and coordination wanted for flight within the wild and acclimatize to their pure habitat. Tavera and her colleagues went to extraordinary lengths to cut back Luna and Roque’s habituation to people, carrying costumes fastidiously camouflaged to mix with the shadows of the timber every time they entered the enclosure. Nonetheless, readying the raptors for the rainforest would additionally require priming their predatory instincts by feeding them dwell prey.
Following strict moral pointers, the feeding began with home animals resembling chickens, geese, and rabbits. Progressively, wild animals—resembling sloths, monkeys, and tegu lizards—had been included to familiarize the birds with widespread quarry. “At the same time as a biologist, it was difficult to feed them dwell prey,” Tavera says. “However these are birds of prey, and so they might solely be prepared for launch if they may survive within the wild.” By early 2023, the eagles had honed their looking expertise, and launch might now not be delayed. Even so, finding an acceptable launch website would show a problem given the threats going through the eagle within the wild.
The primary location thought-about was the stretch of forest the place the eagles had been rescued. In a wierd twist, whereas surveying the realm, Tavera encountered the person who felled the tree that introduced down one of many nests. “Talking with him modified my thoughts. I couldn’t see him as ‘the unhealthy man,’” she says. “He’d by no means had an schooling due to his poverty, so he didn’t perceive the injury he had triggered and even know what a Harpy Eagle was.”
However, logging pressures rapidly dominated out that space and several other others. An acceptable website was finally found in Cinma San Martin, a sustainably managed space of forest within the Bajo Paraguá area of Santa Cruz. The 295,000 acres of rainforest promised an optimum habitat, with minimal threats from people and loads of prey.
On the day of their launch, the eagles, fitted with radio transmitters, had been transported six hours by gentle plane to the discharge website, the place the workforce waited nervously on the bottom. The birds had been then transported in packing containers to a close-by clearing and let out. Roque, the male, swiftly vanished into the forest whereas Luna perched on a excessive department, watching the people assembled beneath earlier than lastly hovering out of view. “I felt aid and disappointment,” Tavera says. “And then you definitely begin to fear in regards to the probabilities of them surviving.”
Regardless of these fears, the eagles haven’t simply survived; they’re thriving. The pair separated shortly after launch, dashing the workforce’s hopes that they’d turn into a breeding pair. Since September, nonetheless, transmitter knowledge present that they’ve been exploring the realm to determine territories of their very own. The tempo of their exercise additionally signifies that they’ve been buying sufficient vitality by looking. In December, after three months of cautious statement, the workforce formally declared the reintroduction successful.
The accomplishment has fueled optimism of attaining the identical consequence with a number of different Harpy Eagles languishing in rescue facilities within the nation. “With Luna and Roque, we’ve gained the hands-on sensible expertise and expertise wanted to place extra of those birds again within the wild,” Tavera says. Making ready them for launch could have been her first time working with birds, nevertheless it gained’t be her final: Tavera will quickly lead the rehabilitation part of a brand new nationwide conservation program for Harpy Eagles spurred partially by the success with Luna and Roque. She couldn’t be happier to don the ghillie swimsuit as soon as once more.
