Jackie, the Big Bear bald eagle whose life drew a worldwide audience, died after weeks of intensive care at the Ojai Raptor Center. The center said Monday that the eagle had been treated for severe anemia and remained critically ill despite oxygen therapy, supportive treatment and around-the-clock monitoring.
That death lands hard because Jackie was not just any injured bird. Friends of Big Bear Valley said she had become the matriarch of the famous Big Bear bald eagle nest around 2017, after Ricky and Lucy left the area and after a livestream camera had already been installed. Jackie later paired with Mr. B, then with Shadow, and over the years raised six chicks, including Sandy and Luna this season, Sunny and Gizmo last year, Spirit in 2022 and Simba in 2019.
The rush of concern around Jackie intensified because the Ojai Raptor Center had warned on Sunday that she was “critically ill,” “unstable” and in an “extremely serious” condition. Friends of Big Bear Valley, which said it has roughly 1.3 million Facebook followers, told supporters that the update would be deeply felt around the world and asked people to be kind to themselves, to each other and to the care teams. The L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation said Jackie taught the world so much about bald eagles and the importance of protecting wildlife.
Even so, one question never fully went away: why she became so sick in the first place. Veterinarians struggled for weeks to determine what was causing the anemia, and the bird had been rescued in July after a brief fight with two other eagles. That fight explained the immediate rescue, but it did not explain why she was already weak, vulnerable, underweight and unable to fly; those signs pointed to a longer decline that had likely started before the rescue ever happened. Jackie was believed to be about 14 years old.
For the people who watched her through the nest livestream, the next chapter is narrower and more somber than the story they had followed for years. Jackie is gone, and the unanswered part is what finally drove the anemia that took her down while she was being watched so closely at the Ojai Raptor Center.
