MV, a young female Harpy Eagle, gets her name from letters engraved in a metallic blue band on her left leg. She hatched January 16, 1998 at the Zoological Society of San Diego and was reared there until April 1998 when she was transferred to the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise. At the World Center she was puppet-reared and also spent time with an adult female Harpy Eagle. In August 1998, MV was transferred to an enclosure in Panama’s Soberania National Forest for hack and release. Within a year she had captured her first Three-toed Sloth despite her lack of parental guidance. After dispersing far from her hack site, MV was relocated to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in October 1999 following the relocation of James, another young captive-bred Harpy Eagle. BCI was the ideal location for the eagles’ release because it is a research sanctuary highly protected by game wardens and ecological police. Additionally, long-term research supported by the Smithsonian’s well-established facilities on the island provides readily available data such as population numbers of other species present.

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