A bald eagle whose loves and losses riveted millions via a livestream of her lifelong nest died in a California animal hospital on Monday.
The eagle, known as Jackie, gained worldwide fame during the Covid-19 pandemic, as a bored public became enraptured by her life in the rugged San Bernardino Mountains. Viewers tuned in to watch her soaring, nesting and squawking over a landscape that was suddenly far less filled with the affairs of human beings.
Jackie raised eaglets with two mates in the same nest where she was born in 2012, atop a 120-foot-tall Jeffrey pine in Big Bear Valley, a lakeside recreation area in Southern California.
Then last month, she fought off an apparent attack on the ground by other eagles, defending herself by rolling on her back and slashing at them with her talons.
She wasn’t injured, but she was unable to fly. Rescued by park workers, she was taken to the Ojai Raptor Center, a wildlife rehabilitation center hundreds of miles away in Ojai, Calif.
Jackie underwent extensive medical treatment there as fans tracked her plight on social media. The center’s staff found several underlying medical conditions, including kidney inflammation and severe anemia, that Jackie was unable to overcome.
Chris Eksteen, the center’s executive director, posted that Jackie had most likely been sick for some time.
Bill Bowerman, a professor of wildlife ecology and environmental toxicology at the University of Maryland, said it was likely that the young eagles seen attacking Jackie in a video were probably “hungry and thought that Jackie was sitting on the shoreline with a fish.”
They were likely unaware of her weakened condition, he said.
Jenny Voisard, a spokeswoman for Friends of Big Bear Valley, a nonprofit conservation group that operates the webcam trained on Jackie’s nest, agreed with that assessment. “They were just being eagles, and trying to take her fish and potentially territory,” she wrote in an email.
The raptor center announced Jackie’s death on Monday. “We know this news will be deeply felt by the many thousands of people around the world who have followed her journey, hoped alongside us, prayed for her, and supported the people caring for her,” the center said in a Facebook post.
“It has been an extraordinary privilege to care for her,” the center added.
Jackie hatched in the spring of 2012 and rose to fame in 2015, when a camera was installed on her parents’ nest, which she eventually took over along with her mate, Mr. B. In 2018, a new male, later named Shadow, arrived and pushed Mr. B out.
Fans watching the livestream weighed in as Jackie and Shadow attempted to start a family. Viewers mourned after some of Jackie’s eggs were determined non-viable and scavenged by ravens and celebrated the births of healthier offspring. Recent sightings of a younger female perching near Shadow created a flurry of tabloid-style speculation, but experts said it was unlikely that either eagle was looking for a new mate.
Last month, after a decades-long effort by conservationists to protect Jackie’s habitat from development, Friends of Big Bear Valley announced that it had received $10.5 million in donations, allowing the group to create a sanctuary for the eagles and other wildlife.
At the raptor center, which is about two hours northwest of Los Angeles, concerns and then condolences poured in via social media and the postal box on Monday.
“Every day I check the mail, there have been probably 50 letters for Jackie in there,” said Ethan Van Dusen, office manager for the neighboring Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, which shares the mailbox, shortly before news of the eagle’s death was posted.
“People are sending donations,” he said. “Someone sent salmon from Alaska. Someone sent Fiji water because they wanted her to drink water that was pure.”
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