Dear Editor,
I read your article ‘Harpy eagles wings still clipped,’ on Monday Nov 10, 2008, about the misplacement of US$30,000 donated by the Odense Municipality of Denmark to build a giant aviary for our harpy eagles. It simply amazes me that no one can, or is willing, to shed light on the whereabouts of these monies and plans, if any, to build the badly needed new cage for our four very unhappy harpies.
I googled a few websites on harpies to get information on how they actually live in the wild and compared it with how they live in our Georgetown Zoo, based on observations and comments from others.
The Harpy Eagle is the largest eagle in the Americas and one of the largest and most powerful birds of prey in the world. These are the most incredible birds you can imagine, and must be seen to be believed! Fortunately, we in Guyana have two options: we can see them in the wild in the Kanuku and Iwokrama Mountains or we can see them up close in our own Georgetown Zoo. In either case they are truly beautiful and awe-inspiring but those in the zoo look as though they haven’t smiled in years.
Although the existence of these majestic birds is threatened, particularly by habitat loss, Guyana still provides a refuge for this endangered species. In fact Guyana’s relatively large population of Harpy Eagles caught the attention of National Geographic which filmed the documentary Flight of the Harpy Eagle in Guyana.
Given our good fortune to be the home of a significant number of the world’s remaining population of harpies you would think we would go the extra mile and take pride in showing off the four presently housed in their cramped cages in our zoo. But we have not!
Family life: Harpy eagles mate for life and produce offspring every 2-3 years. Both parents incubate their one or two eggs, of which only the first chick survives. Both parents feed the eaglet for about six months while the male does the majority of hunting.
In the Georgetown Zoo, conditions do not motivate harpies to mate or hunt so they really have no family life.
Size and strength: Female harpies are often twice as large as males and can grow up to three feet in height. They have wingspans of up to 8 ft and can reach 25 lbs in weight. Their legs are as thick as the wrist of a small child.
After over 50 years in the Georgetown Zoo our largest harpy weighs less than 20 lbs.
Diet: In the wilds, these massive hunters search the canopies of undisturbed lowland tropical rain forest looking for their usual prey of sloths and monkeys or other large arboreal animals. They have enhanced hearing and acute vision and can spot a two-centimetre object from 200 meters away.
In the Georgetown Zoo the width of their cage is only 12 feet so the harpies don’t need their acute vision to locate their daily fare of raw horse, donkey or cow meat obtained from road kill or donated by good citizens.
The point I want to make is that our magnificent harpies (name borrowed from harpies – half woman and half vulture in ancient Greek mythology) have been suffering in cramped space for years (one for over 50 years and the other three for 6 to 15 years) and enough is enough!
Our four harpies are living in four small cages in the Georgetown Zoo: two in one cage 13′x13′ 16 ft high; one in a cage 9′x12′ 12 ft high, and the luckier one in a cage 20′x40′ 10ft high. Exercise room for our harpies therefore varies from almost nothing to inadequate.
If we the people do not speak out and act now they will likely suffer there until they die.
The first step is to find out the whereabouts of the $30,000 donated by the Odense Municipality of Denmark on April 11, 2003 to build our harpies a new cage. Anyone knowing what happened to these funds should please inform the editor.
Yours faithfully,
Syeada Manbodh
