(metal creaking) (machine running) (birds chirping) (gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] The Philippine
Monkey Eating Eagle, a noble bird, but nobility has helped little. This is the world's rarest eagle, reduced today to a mere 50 pairs. (machine engine running) - Nope. Yeah, at least there's oil, but... (gentle instrumental music) It's kind of strange because
all these years have gone by... 36 years... and from time to time my mind would drift to the Philippines,
to the Philippine Eagle. It was always in the back of my mind... Will I ever actually go
back to the Philippines and do a new film and
study the eagle again? - How you doing, Bill? - Good. - Neil, Neil Rettig. Good to meet you. (fire crackling) - [Laura] Number two is the
cargo frames, the blind... the bag of tools. - [Neil] Yes. - [Laura] So what we should
have in here is number three. - [Neil] Alright, let's
just start with that. so this has got to be the final inventory. - [Laura] I have three,
three, five, two, nine, five. - [Neil] Three, three,
five, two, nine, five, yup. - Alright, we're talking about the 180 millimeter lens? - Yeah. - Yup, and inside-- - [Neil] There is a
serial number for that. - [Laura] So I've got a serial number for that. - [Neil] You do, okay. - Yup. When we said that we were going to the Philippines for five or six months to film the most highly
endangered eagle in the world, everybody thought we were crazy. - I've got to make sure I've
got some good working pens. - And I think that I don't realize that everybody else doesn't
make the same leaps that, and same conclusions that we do. That's going to have to go to customs. - I would never believe that I could be sitting here right now and still know that Philippine
Eagles are still out there, because 36 years ago I was convinced that the bird probably
had about 20 years left, and now all these years have gone by, and there's still Philippine
Eagles in the wild... but I don't know how much
longer that's gonna last. (whistle blowing) (bird hooting) - You want to go catch a bunny? - [Neil] I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best birder in the world. I'm not very good at identifying a lot of the small warblers
and things like that. - that was beautiful. But I'm obsessed with birds of prey. (door creaking) - It's okay. Our situation is a little bit different than most people that have pets. - Hey, do you have a big turkey neck? So that's a little bit of a concern... and also, just this place
takes a lot to maintain. - [Neil] I still don't like to turn my back on him all the time. - Come on you. Come down here and eat, yup. - Maybe if you could just
come here and hold this. (drill running) (bird hooting) That was a little scary. Come on. No, come on. Come on. Get out of here. Come on. Come on. - She keeps the humidifier full. Maybe you should-- - We've been planning
for a year and a half, and sometimes I wonder, I really wonder, if we're biting off more than we can chew. (birds hooting) Hey, guys. I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be able to climb a 120 foot tree. What are you guys doing? I'm 64 years old, and it's a little harder to climb a tree than it was when I was 27. (whistle blowing) - When Neil came to me and
said he was going back, I said I'd love to participate, but I think I'm gonna pass. As we get older, you get a little more
objective about things. He still had a lot of
that fire and dedication that he had as a young man. He says, "Well, it's possible "we're gonna make this work." - I'm hopeful that we
will make a difference because I've seen how
images have the power to change the way people look at nature, change the way they
look at the environment, and change the way they care. (car engine running) - [Narrator] This is a story with some unlikely ingredients, (birds chirping) one, the jungles of the Philippines, two, Chicago, USA, not the world's safest place either, a concrete jungle. Three, three determined Americans and their determination took them across the world to the Philippines on a dramatic wildlife project which lasted almost two years. - [Neil] Bill, I'd like
you to meet Bob Kennedy. - Bob. - Hey, Bill, how you doing? Nice to meet you. It was the opportunity of a
lifetime for all of us really. - [Neil] We had a team. It was quite a good team. We had this lust for adventure. (camera shutter clicking) - I don't know of any other group of men who would spend their life and all their energies
on a single mission, and that is to protect
the endangered animals. - [Bob] We arrived in the Philippines. We had 1,500 pounds of excess baggage, 40 bags of camera gear,
film, the whole nine yards. (upbeat instrumental music) - [Neil] The monkey eating eagle
was really the grand prize. Nobody knew anything about it. - [Bob] We were filming and
getting first time ever stuff. It was just first, first,
everything was first. - [Narrator] This has
not been filmed before, and so intimate aspects of this spectacular bird's behavior are being recorded for the first time. - We were experienced, but we were naive, as young people are. (laughing) And we still just forged ahead as if we were immune to any danger or anything happening to us. We wanted to do whatever we
could to publicize the eagles. (car horns blowing) (whistle blowing) (gentle instrumental music) (birds chirping) - There are some really
powerful forces now that the people who are trying
to protect the environment in this country are up against. They're gaining ground, but it's a race against time, and time's not on their side. (gentle instrumental music) (insects chirping) (birds crowing) (speaking in a foreign language) (plane engine running) (gentle instrumental music) - Nine, 10, 11 duffel bags. (speaking in a foreign language) (horns blowing) - In 1977, there was about
400,000 people in Davao. Now there's 1.5 million, and that population growth has translated to more pressure on the forests, more hectic conditions here, and it's a different place. It's a different Philippines than I remember all those years ago. If it wasn't for the
Philippine Eagle Foundation, the eagle would probably
already be almost extinct. This road is horrendous. Oh. It is so steep here, it is incredible, and there's little houses way up there. (insects chirping) - [Narrator] The eagle's domain, the only place in the
world that it occurs, is the Philippine Islands, over 7,000 of them. Built from coral and volcanoes, they cover a 114,400 square miles between southeast Asia and Australia, just north of the equator, and with rich volcanic soils watered by heavy tropical rains. Their natural cover is forests. Literally, it is steaming jungle. (birds chirping) (gentle instrumental music) - The forests of the Philippines has been evolving since
before the Philippines. - The Philippines sits
in a belt of weather and environment that allows things to grow in a phenomenal manner. - The Philippines is considered one of the 17 mega diverse
countries in the world. The biggest, of course, was Brazil, followed by China, Indonesia, but these countries are 28 times larger than the Philippines, so on a per unit area basis, the Philippines pack more biodiversity than any country in the world. - I once asked a scientist, if we are so special,
why don't we have tigers? Why don't we have rhino? Why don't we have orangutan? And he said, "Don't feel bad "that you don't have tigers, "that you don't have rhino, "'cause you have the largest
salt water crocodiles "in the world. "You have the largest snake,
the Reticulated python, "and you have the Philippine Eagle." - I think my memory has
slipped a little bit as to how difficult it is here. The forest is damp, and wet,
claustrophobic and enclosed. This is a hellacious climb. There's loose rocks. We're basically on our hands
and knees all the way up. We're trying to get up
on top of a ridge here, to look down and see what kind of a panoramic view we can have, and maybe even see the nest tree. I think we've kind of lost
Skip back there on the trail, but it is not fun. (birds chirping) What do you think? - I think it's generous
to call that a hike. That's climbing. - [Neil] You know what the good news is? We're an eighth of our way there. (laughing) - [Narrator] There is no
way eagles can nest here. Where are they? It takes F.R.E.E. six and
a half weeks to find out. - Just like finding a
needle in a haystack. We were going out basically every day, but we could never find the nest. - [Narrator] No nest had
been found since 1963, and everyone said it
was an impossible task. - Crossing rivers and streams, getting leaches on our bodies, I actually ended up having leaches on my eyes at one point. (thunder rumbling) A big missing link there
is that we didn't know they laid one egg every two years, so it was particularly hard to find a nest because you might be watching a pair of eagles during the off year. - [Narrator] They separate to check either side of a ravine where they've had a rare
glimpse of an eagle. - It's such a big bird. It's difficult to miss, yet this big bird was only identified or discovered as new to science in 1896, so you can just imagine that for 400 years the
Spaniards were here, and nobody knew that it was there. - [Narrator] At last, they find what they've been searching for. - Yo, Bob, over here Bob. - And I yelled over to Harry that I think there's a nest there. There's a nest. There it is. - Where? - And we were able to view the nest and see the eagle incubating
a single white egg. (gentle instrumental music) - [Perry] I think by seeing human shapes, they just disappear, so the challenge of finding
them is really very high. If you find it in your first try, you are a very lucky person. You would have to have
prayed to high heavens to get that chance. (speaking in a foreign language) - [Neil] Perfecto has known
this area all of his life, ever since he was a little kid. So we follow every step
he takes in the forest. (speaking in a foreign language) (birds chirping) - On the right side, there's a piece of green vegetation, and behind that a dark shape is moving. It might just be a leaf, but it might. It could. I can't tell. - I'm absolutely amazed that
Perfecto found this nest. There's only one or two spots where you can barely see through this hole in the vegetation. Skip and Laura come in, over. - [Skip] We copy, Neil, over. - [Neil] Okay, we're finally at the nest, higher than we were before. It's still a very, very limited view. I know. It is complicated. I'm really hoping that
this location works out. It's possible this egg's not even fertile, which would be a nightmare. (gentle instrumental music) (insects chirping) (birds chirping) We've been here going on 10 days now. (metal clattering) Laura, have you checked the nest to see what's going on? The incubation period
is about 56 to 58 days. - [Laura] She flew back onto
that really far hillside, over. - During that time, it's very, very important not to disturb that nest and keep the female off the egg. (wood creaking) Given the rarity of this bird, we cannot take chances. (gentle instrumental music) What? Skip or Laura, come in, over. Skip or Laura, come in, over. - Yeah, Neil, what is it? We copy. - I've got some great news. We've got a baby Philippine Eagle. We've got a little baby now. It makes me, it makes me just, I have this confidence now, you know? I needed this injection of positive. I can only imagine how
these adults must feel. They're such powerful predators, but now, they have to become good parents, tender parents, provide for the chick. Keep it warm. Protect it. It seems like no matter how many times I've done this during my life, filming birds of prey, you always go through
these different stages of waiting and anxiety, but now, the baby is
so fragile and so, you know, tiny, and he's got to survive. - [Woman] One of the major
goals of the Eagle Foundation is to breed eagles in captivity. On January 15, 1992 the
first Philippine Eagle to be bred in captivity through artificial insemination was born. The Philippine Eagle
population is near extinction with only 51 known individuals. Therefore, this scientific breakthrough of this chick's hatching is vital in the recovery of the species. - Yes. (speaking in a foreign language) - [Woman] It is the
culmination of 14 years work. (bird chirping) The chick is now two days old. Her name is Pag-asa, which means hope. (gentle instrumental music) - One of the challenges with working with the Philippine Eagle
is that it's long lived, an adult Philippine Eagle
can live up to 45 years. - Because they grew up
accustomed to humans, as soon as they become matured, they think of humans as their mates, and Eddie plays that role, a surrogate. (whistling) (bird chirping) (thunder rumbling) (upbeat instrumental music) - [Man] Well, you may not have noticed, but then again, you may have. The rainy season has officially
begun in the Philippines. - [Man] The torrential
rains and fierce winds have all but shut down Manila. Around 20 major storms pass over the Philippines each year. (thunder rumbling) - [Laura] Do you hear all that thunder? (gentle instrumental music) - [Neil] Yeah, I was just hoping the bird maybe would come back. Oh my goodness. Today, the baby eagle was
left alone on the nest because we frightened the female off, and it started to rain. It started to rain hard. You're looking at your watch. She's been off for an hour. It's a cold rain, and he looks like a drowned
rat, completely soaked, and he's starting to shiver. (bird screeching) - Those downy feathers that that chick has is really good insulation, but as soon as the feathers get wet, the insulating properties go to nil, and baby birds have really zero body fat. - I think a cold rain
could kill a young eagle in an hour and a half, two hours. That was like a wake up call. Ideally, to really,
really do the job we want, I would like to be 100 feet away. Even a little closer maybe? 80 feet away? But it's kind of agonizing wondering if we're gonna be able to pull this off without frightening the birds, without causing harm to the baby. - [Laura] We certainly don't
expect any birds of prey to readily accept
everything that we're doing, but Neil's experience with
other Philippine Eagles is that they're really quite a bit more tolerant than this. (gentle instrumental music) - That tree was about 200 feet tall, and the nest was about a
145 feet above the ground. Trying to get around a limb, at 110 feet off the ground, that's as big around as a horse, that is a scary process. - One of the biggest risks in climbing these tropical trees is insects. If you run into insects that are nasty, there's no place to go. You can't run. Where are you gonna go? You can't just drop out
of the tree. (laughing) That would be worse than the bugs. I don't need that rope, over. - [Laura] Your climbing,
your extra climbing gear? - Oh yeah, the extra climbing gear, yes, and the saw, over, okay? - [Laura] Got it. (gentle instrumental music) - What the hell am I doing here? You got to just kind of ignore them, which is almost impossible. The bees are getting
really, really severe. The process for building platforms or blinds in the trees
is kind of complicated. - [Narrator] It's built slowly with a couple of pieces each day, over a four to five day period. This lets the eagles become familiar with the new odd shaped
structure in the neighborhood. At the nest site, they build from three to five hides. The first one is about 200 yards away. (animal hooting) The final hide is about 25 yards away and slightly above the nest so as to be able to see into it. - So what we did is we found a smaller neighboring tree, and we sent a rope across to the main limb of the nest tree, and then we basically just used carabiners and pulled our way across. Neil was actually the
first person to go across. I followed him. This was like a unique
lifetime experience. Here I had this young eaglet of a pair that produces only one young
eaglet every two years, in my hands, one of the rarest
living things on the planet, and we got the first photographs of the eaglet in the nest, up close and personal, and then I proceeded to do
that climb every 10 days. - [Narrator] Every 10 days, he climbs the nest tree to weigh, measure, and photograph the eaglet. - Well, when you're doing that, you've got one of the largest, most powerful eagles in the world, and here you are dangling from a rope, at 120, 140 feet off the ground, and eagles, and many birds of prey, do not like people to enter their nests or get near their nests, and so they will attack, and the guys would photograph that. - [Alan] Neil do you
see the female anywhere? Over. - She's in the green fig tree, over. - [Alan] Okay, yeah, we
can just make her out up on that limb. - [Neil] As soon as she leaves the tree, I'll let you know, over and out. (birds chirping) - I had straddled this very large branch where the nest was, and I heard from the guys up on the hill, "Here she comes." - Watch out here she comes. She's coming right now. - And I just looked out
of the corner of my eye and over my shoulder, and she was heading at me, and I went like this, and she put a gash in the helmet and punctured my arm and tore my arm open. - [Alan] It looks like she
got a piece of you that time. - [Wolfgang] Did you get her? - Yeah, oh, I got her. - [Neil] Did you guys get that? Over. - Looks like Bob might have
a few scars on him, over. - I saw the whole thing
through the viewfinder, and it looked like Kennedy
might have gotten hit in the head and shoulder. - He's got blood on him down there. - [Alan] Yeah, you saw right. There's about a four inch
gash down his shoulder and a little blood coming out, and I can see a long, deep
gouge in the helmet, over. - A little blood? - [Alan] In his neck, over. - I'm very proud to have been attacked by a Philippine Eagle on the nest. She was doing the right thing. I was intruding. (laughing) - The original plan was to start building a closer tree platform when the young eagle was
seven to 10 days old. We've been at this site going on a month, and the young eagle now
is going on 21 days old. That's a very high, tall tree. (gentle instrumental music) Alright, here we go. - [Laura] Skip, can you give us the time since Neil started climbing
just for reference? Over. - [Skip] Yeah, it's been
just over 30 minutes since Neil started to climb, but we're at 55 minutes since the eagle was
last on the nest, over. - [Neil] We can only work
an hour and a half each day. In one day, you may be lucky only to put up two pieces of wood. Next day you gotta climb again to put up two or three
more pieces of wood. The day after that, maybe you're lucky you can put some planks up. So a six foot two by four
would be awesome, over. - [Skip] Okay, we'll
cut it and send it up. - I'm actually swallowing
insects up here like crazy. You wouldn't believe it. - Well, we're gonna finish up this close platform, and as soon as we do,
start shooting from it. The closest we've been able to film from so far is 70 meters. It's a good view, but you can't get those
intimate close ups. You can't get the things that are gonna help people emotionally
connect to these birds. We wish we had this close
platform a month ago, but circumstances are what they are. (drill running) This platform is gonna change everything. - So this is the finished blind, and the work's gonna begin tomorrow here. Bugs are horrible. (birds chirping) (insects buzzing) - [Bob] You can't imagine
the feeling of power, of grandeur, of an animal like this, until you really get up close. - I remember clearly the first time I ever saw a Philippine Eagle, and I was completely blown away by how different it was
from so many other birds of prey that I know. It's got this beautiful
crest that stands up, and it's got these beautiful blue eyes, and it's got bone crushing powerful feet. (gentle instrumental music) (Bird screeching) You can imagine what
it's like to be a monkey when they're in a troop. They're trying to protect their young ones when this top notch predator comes in. - I have seen two
individuals hunting together, and occasionally you'll see one eagle kind of distracting monkeys when another eagle would come up from behind and grab them, kind of like the Velociraptors
of Jurassic Park. (monkey screeching) Unlike many birds of prey that don't necessarily eat large bones, the eagles do eat large bones. They get it in their mouth, and then they go like this to force it down into their crop. Well, the eagles don't realize. If you offer that thing to a chick, the chicks are not capable
of dealing with it. - There's been numerous times when I've watched the eaglet
taking a bone that long and trying to choke it down. You know, it's a scary thing to watch because I always relate
back to that awful day. - [Narrator] It's in this early stage of the nesting cycle that
the chick is most vulnerable. The filming is going well, but the men know it's a critical time. - [Bob] I thought everything
was pretty much on course. We had succeeded in finding the nest. We had a healthy chick and
everything was going great, and then tragedy struck. - It was January 19th, 1978. I was the only one there. I was alone in the blind. I couldn't believe what I had just seen, what just happened. (gentle instrumental music) - [Bob] I can't just imagine, going out, setting up to film that morning, seeing that the eaglet is in trouble and not being able to
do anything about it. - [Narrator] And then the crisis comes. The chick chokes on a bone and dies. - And the whole project just fell apart right then and there. I fell apart. This was the same chick I watched hatch, I made sketches of,
recorded all of the detail. I had kind of a real bond
with that baby eagle, and then we had to go out
and find another nest, and that took two months of searching. - [Narrator] But at last, with the help of their
Filipino colleagues, they find what they've been searching for, once again, almost hidden. - [Bob] You know, you kind
of live to play another day, and you know it happens in nature. Nature is not necessarily
the nicest place out there. (whistling) - Every egg is a precious thing to us because we only get a few fertile eggs. (insects chirping) (birds chirping) - The chick just let out a huge yawn. The chick spends about 80% of the time just laying down on the nest. When this baby eagle leaves its nest, it's never gonna lay down again. Unless it's incubating an egg someday, it'll always be perched upright somewhere. I mean, it seems to
really enjoy laying down and stretching out, so it's like, I guess growing up sucks. (gentle instrumental music) - For a bird like this, to go from this stage to
a self sufficient hunter is pretty mind blowing. Perfect, perfect. - Yeah. - Okay ready? One, two, three. - [Laura] Pelican case is on it's way up. - There is a tender side to these eagles. There's this connected sense of family between the mother and father eagle and the chick, their baby. - [Man] Yes. - [Neil] These birds
are working constantly, both the male and female. Right from the beginning
of the nesting cycle all the way through 'til these young birds are independent, they're eating snakes and bats and lemurs and monkeys and owls. They are working their butts off. - Later on in the afternoon, the chick started feeding itself from a bit of a carcass that one of the adults had left behind, and it brought it right out into the open, so I could see the whole head of a Civet. Most of the time, the adults kind of eat the head before they come in. - [Neil] Every time I come
up to this close blind, he's changed. He knows he's an eagle. He knows he's a Philippine Eagle. He's born and raised in the canopy. He sees the prey that they're bring in, and he's learning all of these
vital things for survival. - I've spent so many
days over the last four, four and a half months, sitting here watching this baby eagle, all day long, that I've kind of grown to think of him like he's my buddy, like I left all my friends behind at home, but I still got this eagle and we're like hanging out in the trees together all day. (wood cracking) - This Sinaka pair of Philippine Eagles miraculously are pulling
off raising a family. It almost seems as if when we're here, watching these eagles from our blinds, that everything is okay, and they're in this forest, but we've got to remember that this is a tiny fragment of forest, and everything is not okay. The three eagles that live here are three of 300 birds in the world, and they're raising this chick as if nothing's changed
for thousands of years. They can't comprehend that this baby, when he leaves, he has no place to go. - [Man] There are great tracks
of forest in these islands, and forestry is one of
the biggest industries. (wood thudding) - Axes and two man saws, with this kind of equipment, it was slow. The best feller in those days, the most he could do was
one tree and a half a day. With a chain saw, (laughing)
one guy can do a lot more. - Scene two, take two (chainsaw running) - [Narrator] The home of
the eagle is threatened by the demand for hardwoods
in distant countries. Rich countries like Japan, Europe, and the United States want that timber. To satisfy this apparently
insatiable demand, logging goes on day and night. (gentle instrumental music) - [Neil] In the late 1970's, the logging industry was booming. Every road, every highway
in the Philippines had logging trucks back
and forth 24 hours a day. - I am happy to see that the reaction throughout the country is favorable. I have received hundreds
and hundreds of telegrams from all corners of the
Philippines congratulating you, and incidentally, me, for the
proclamation of martial law. - The height of logging was
during the martial law era where they were cutting down close to 400,000 hectares a year. - President Marcos used
the forest as a tool to enrich his friends and himself, as a tool to remain in power. - All you had to do was be
relatively close to politicians, give them money during campaigns, and they'll give you these concessions. - The entire country had been divided up into logging concessions. They were cutting the timber
out as quickly as possible. - [Marites] No one was watching. There was no regulation, so
they just cut with impunity. - And the government became so corrupt, you could do anything you wanted. Just wait for the inspector to come, and then bribe him. - [Bob] There was really no
incentive to protect anything. - [Narrator] The eagle's
home is removed wholesale in this onslaught of modern technology. Two acres of forest are felled every one and a half minutes. - I saw how enormous the loss was, how greedy Marcos was. It wasn't just the money he stole from us. It was the forest which he
stole from the Filipino people. - The first penetration
of our forest areas were by big commercial logging firms, and they created access for
a lot of smaller forces. - [Pat] Most of the concessions
were in remote areas, and in order to get there, you had to build roads to get in. - When you build a road to the forest, for whatever reason, it becomes bad for the forest because people trek in, and when people trek in, you can't stop them from
trying to make a living. - Population pressure became intense, and people who didn't have land or didn't have farms in the low lands, didn't have jobs in the low lands, they'd move up and do
slash and burn farming, and the forests quickly disappeared. I mean, there were hardly
even remnants of trees left. There might have been some
stumps and things like that, but for as far as you could
see some places were gone. (gentle instrumental music) - We've gone through millions of years of the diversity that we
now have in the Philippines, and in 100 years we've decimated it. - It looked like it'd last forever, the forests were so thick. The forests went all the way to the ocean, all the way to the ocean. - We destroyed all of that in 70 years. - We used to have 20 million hectares of virgin forest in this country, around about the 1930s or so, and of the 1990s this was down to an estimated just one million hectares. - It starts off with being massive. Basically all of our islands, over 7,000, suffered deforestation. - There's hardly any forests left. The forests are just confined to these little tiny ridges, these little tiny sanctuaries that are still remaining where everything else is cleared, and the land is just rolling grassland. - [Pedro] I think if you're
looking out of the plane window, it's always beautiful. You have the cloud formations, the light, the greenness of the land. If you look at it closer, you see it's a landscape that's bleeding. (speaking in a foreign language) (gentle instrumental music) - [Man] There are a number of things that have changed profoundly over the last three decades
here in the Philippines. First of all is population. (train engine running) (horns blowing) The Philippines with 100 million people is actually the 14th most
populous country in the world, and so, small as our country is, you can imagine what that means as far as population density is concerned. - [Howie] Any way you look at it, 100 million people is a lot of people, but we don't have the luxury of space in the Philippines, and that creates all kinds
of pressure on the land, on the environment, on ecosystems, and when populations are forced to go to the unlikeliest
places for habitation, like wilderness, they're gonna be in direct competition with other living things. (birds crowing) - I don't like the feeling when there's birds coming in because there's another
one removed from the wild. - So Matatag arrived as a bird that is in poor condition. Almost all of its flight
feathers were gone. The bird was severely dehydrated. - [Anna] When an injured
bird comes to the center, some of them are almost
to the point of dying. (bird screeching) If you get to nurse them back to health and they have another chance of being released back to the wild, you get the feeling that
you've accomplished something. Birds that come in to the center are mostly juveniles, maybe because they're
inquisitive by nature. They don't know the dangers yet of humans. (birds chirping) - We started hiking around
7:30 that Sunday morning. We arrived here around 10:40 A.M. I remember the head is here, facing there, the tail, here. The back is here with
the monitoring device, looked like a bird just
crashed, in the side, like a crash landing. - Just crash here, directly here. - When Ron told me about
the death of the bird, he quickly mentioned there's a crack in the keel bone, and he himself thinks that
it's caused by a bullet. - [Ron] We're looking for
an air gun pellet or bullet. Right now it could have been covered with some mud and making it hard to find. - The experience of the
Philippine Eagle Foundation is that whenever they
encounter a Philippine Eagle that are brought to them, it's been shot. It's been shot. - We always say that if you want to see a model for Philippine Eagle and people living together, you should go to Mount Apo, and then you get this news, that one of your precious birds, actually nesting in
the oldest nesting site in the Philippines, is dead. (bones clacking) If this individual, which
has been watched over for several years, can die, and this pair is within a protected area, what more for eagles in unprotected areas? - We hear news every year that there are eagles caught. There are eagles killed, died, so if this continues, 20,
30 years, or 50 years, we'll lose everything. (speaking in a foreign language) (dramatic instrumental music) - If present trends continue, you'll only see Philippine
Eagles in captivity. You'll never see the
Philippine Eagle soar again. - I don't want to explain to my child that I'm working with the
eagles only in captivity. I want to give him a chance to see eagles in the wild as well because I did have a chance before to see eagles in the wild, and I want him to have the same chance. - You still have other eagles that you can spare from this experience, so how do we do that? We need to move forward. - Awareness is passe at this stage. We have to move on to attitude. If you want an A for awareness, I'm looking an A for attitude. I want a change in attitude. That's something that sticks, and that's something
you feel in your guts. (birds chirping) - What I do when I'm up here is I just stare at this viewfinder, and that's all I do. (gentle instrumental music) To put all your energy into it, all of your senses have to be riveted. I'll go back to a higher frame rate in case we get an arrival. Hornbills are kind of
getting panicky again. - As important as this is and as dedicated as Neil has been, I have a level of pessimism that until some major
sociological changes take place, that we're all just delaying the eventual. - Some people question the sanity of actually trying anything. They just kind of throw the towel in, and they hold their hands up, and they say, "What can we do?" What can you do? Population's gonna continue. The forests will all be cut down, and the eagle will be extinct. You know, let's not just give up. Let's not say it's impossible. Let's not give up hope
for the Philippine Eagle and other endangered
species around the world, including elephants, rhinos. (camera running) - There was no obstacle that
was too tall to get over. He found a way to get around it. There was no, no. He didn't say, "No, we can't do that." You know, we'll never find a nest. You know, the eaglet died. We'll never find another nest. These are words that Neil would never say. He followed through with
it, regardless of the odds. - For me, these creatures
are masterpieces of nature. Some people say masterpieces of God. Some people correlate it to religion. I personally cannot stand the thought of these masterpieces becoming extinct, and so, there's a handful of people who want to do something about it, and I'm one of them. (birds chirping) (gentle instrumental music) - [Jayson] There are no hopeless cases. Only people losing hope, and I don't want to be
that person, losing hope, and I can see that my
colleagues share the same thing. It's this faith that we have that this bird has a chance
to survive in the wild. We know that other people
might not share our values, but there's also a big possibility that such values can be
shared by other people. - You have to have a dogged determination that where other people find
excuses not to do things, you find the way to make it happen. (whistling) - Look at that, egg. - Philippine Eagle conservation work is not just about biology. It not about ecology. It's not just about research. It's basically working with the diversity of human tendencies, of human behavior. It's part economic. It's partly political. It's partly scientific, rolled into one. Things are connected. - I'm hopeful that we
will make a difference because I think we made a difference 36 years ago. The work we did has bought the eagle time, time by influencing people,
even President Marcos. - The eagle was described
as Pithecophaga jefferyi, Pithecos meaning monkey, and phaga meaning eater or destroyer, so from the beginning of time, this bird was known, even to the local people, as a bird that eats monkeys. Well, you go in and talk to people about the monkey eating eagle and how important it is, and they take up sides with the monkeys, so it was very important that we get rid of that name. When we went in to see Marcos, we said, this is a bird
that does eat monkeys, but rarely, and we think
that it's getting a bad rap by being called the monkey eating eagle, and the President said, "Well, if it's only
found in the Philippines, "why don't we call it
the Philippine Eagle?" Bingo, you know. (laughing) So he passed a special
presidential proclamation changing the name from monkey eating eagle to Philippine Eagle. Probably the only name of a bird, in the history of ornithology, that's been changed by a President. (insects chirping) (birds chirping) - Oh. - [Laura] Okay, adult just landed at the nest, everybody, over. - I just saw that. If I can be quick, we
might have a chance, over. - [Laura] Okay, Skip, I
think it might be good for you to not climb yet, over. - I got to get this camera built, get it up and running, get the lens on and actually hope that I do it in time to get him leaving for a possible flying shot. It's a really good chance that we'll get something
from this platform, but you got to think clearly, so you don't drop anything. It's actually kind of exciting. - [Laura] The second one's
coming behind it, over. - I don't like to put
human emotion into animals, but I can tell you what, it seemed to me like
they were just enjoying that day in pair bonding, celebrating the fact that
they've got a young eagle that's healthy and robust, and the first time I've ever
seen anything like that. (thunder rumbling) (rain falling) (gentle instrumental music) Yeah, that's great, to get these details. See, these feathers are pretty much fully grown now, you know? The secondaries are still growing, and the primaries and the tail, little piece of down on
the end of his beak there. He's slowly but surely
losing all that stuff-- - I know. I know. I tried to pay a lot of
attention to the feathers and the preening and that kind of stuff since that's like kind
of crucial right now, is like getting his
feathers ready for flight. - [Neil] So you notice
that when the wind kicks up just the right way, he really gets into it. - [Skip] You can tell
they take great pleasure when they're cleaning their
beak, you know, like-- - That has got to be one of the most amazing beak cleaning shots of any raptor ever done, seriously. That is so nice, oh. (gentle instrumental music) - It will be a legacy
that will live on forever. I think that the vision
to go back to compare what we did in the past
to what we could do today and to go beyond that is very important. - The eagle must be accessible. People must be able to have an opportunity to see why this bird
is our national symbol. When you see that bird, there are few wildlife
experiences that compare. (insects chirping) (speaking in a foreign language) (bird chirping) - [Jayson] We believe that
he belongs to the wild, and I have this faith that something good will come out of this. Every individual counts. Every opportunity where we can release fit birds back into the wild, we take it. (gentle instrumental music) - [Woman] Philippine Eagle. - [Class] Philippine Eagle. (speaking in a foreign language) - Conservation is just not
for the Philippine Eagle or for the animals, or for the wildlife, but also for the ones who live here. They are the one who can decide what will happen for their land. (speaking in a foreign language) We cannot stop. I mean, we should never stop. - [All] One, two, three. One, two three. (yelling) (gentle instrumental music) - It is something awesome. It is something really of wonder. We have to realize that
just having a few of them in the zoo, we understand that
that loses all its meaning. It has to have its empire to fly over. It has to have a view of the Philippines that holds us in awe. (water flowing) (bird chirping) - [Man] If we lose the Philippine
Eagle in the Philippines, the whole world loses. It might be found here, but it's a property of the world. - [Pedro] We want it to be
free across the Philippines, and that's a struggle because it takes more than belief. It takes doing, and this is the time for doing. We know all the right things to say. We have all the policies, but we have to live by it. That's the challenge. You just watch a child see an eagle unfold its wings for the first time, and you relive your own childhood. Yes, you can dismiss it as silly. Rationally it has no value. Economically it has no value, but what it has for the
human spirit is immeasurable. - [Neil] Hey, girl, good girl. - [Laura] The plight of the eagle is about so much more than just the eagle. I think the eagle is a very visible and powerful symbol of
everything that is at risk. - [Man] I think all of us have to realize that saving the Philippine Eagle and saving the Philippine forests really goes way beyond what meets the eye. It's really saving our very
own source of livelihood, our very own future as a country. (gentle instrumental music)
