The Brief

Tens of thousands of people around the world have watched Big Bear’s famous eagle Jackie pair up with mates, huddle through torrential snow storms and joyfully celebrate when her eaglets took flight.

Twelve-year-old bald eagle Jackie and her 10-year-old mate Shadow have again captivated audiences, as thousands watch a live webcam to see if the raptor’s three eggs laid in January will hatch.

The bald eagles live in the San Bernardino Mountains overlooking Big Bear Lake.

“I’m shocked, but at the same time I’ve been totally captivated since the beginning,” said Sandy Steers, executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley, a preservation group that operates the solar-powered webcams and meticulously documents the raptors' lives.

One solar-powered camera is perched next to the nest about 140 feet high, near the very top of a Jeffrey pine tree, giving us a nest sideseat to the duo’s home. The other is pointed up at the tree from a lower angle. Both are streaming live, every minute of the day as dedicated watchers from around the world leave notes for one another, detailing their observations.

“There’s something about watching their day to day life that is totally addictive and intriguing,” Steers said.

How bald eagles came to call Big Bear home

Jackie's parents, Ricky and Lucy, became the first known adult eagles to stay in Big Bear Valley, which until then had only been a winter destination for the species.

Jackie became the first eaglet hatched in Big Bear Valley in 2012, according to Steers who lives near the nest where Jackie was born and watched her grow up.

“We could see the nest from almost a mile away, but you couldn’t see into the nest. One year there were chicks before a storm, and after a storm, nobody. We just wanted to see what was going on inside that nest,” Steers said.

After getting a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service, it took two years to raise the $10,000 needed to buy the equipment and pay experts to install the camera in the 12-story-tall tree.

After installing the camera in 2015, it was later discovered Ricky and Lucy had found a more sheltered tree and built a new nest about 1/4 mile away. The couple successfully raised two chicks, named Midnight and Sky, while the nest with the camera sat empty.

The arrival of Jackie

In 2016, Ricky and Lucy left the area. The next year, a sub-adult female took over the old nest with the camera. There’s no way to know for sure that the raptor is Jackie, but the bird is the right age and the name stuck.

Since then, Jackie has laid 14 eggs. Some years the eggs were infertile or were eaten by ravens. Five of Jackie’s chicks have hatched and three survived to fledging.

“That’s not unusual for eagles,” Steers said. “It’s always very hard and heartbreaking when things don’t work out the way that we would like them to, but it’s nature.”

Steers said if these eggs are infertile the pair could still lay another clutch this season.

The video of the pair’s last chick Spirit taking her first flight from the nest in 2022 has been viewed 182,000 times, with more than 2,200 comments on Facebook.

“It’s been good in that it supports the economy up here with people wanting to know what Big Bear is and know more about it. The people that come that are fans of the eagles are very polite and good with nature, they’re not coming to cause any harm, so it’s been good.”

Still, the exact location of the nest is kept secret.

Why we can’t turn away from wildlife cameras

Public reaction can also be intensely emotional. People have pleaded with Steers and others to build a cover over the nest to protect it from rain and snow, after the raptor pair were catapulted to stardom in 2023 as people around the world watched the birds diligently incubate their eggs through severe snowstorms.

“They are wild animals, we don’t intrude. The eagles know how to have a nest without a canopy on it,” Steers said, laughing.

The eagles are named by Big Bear Elementary School third graders, a practice started by the Forest Service.

Steers said maintaining and repairing the cameras cost between $10,000 and $22,000 a year, which is usually covered by donations. Sometimes the nonprofit asks the viewing public for specialty funds.

The cameras, livestream, newsletters and live chats on Facebook and YouTube are also supported by a devoted group of 10 volunteers around the world who take shifts monitoring and documenting the nest 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The zealous documentation of the raptors has led to a greater understanding of bald eagle behavior, Steers said.

“Sometimes we discover that it’s only Jackie and Shadow that do particular behaviors. We haven’t seen other males on other nests argue to stay sitting on the eggs like Shadow does. At the same time we have seen that all the eagle pairs trade off, and the males take their turn,” Steers said.

The eagles' unique personalities are part of their popularity.

“It’s not just this kind of bird doing instinctive behaviors. They have their own mindset, it’s fascinating to watch," Steers said.

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Four million acres of California’s wildest backcountry could soon be opened to paving roads and logging.

The Trump administration announced last week that it’s pushing forward with a proposal to scrap a 2001 rule that blocks logging, road building and other construction in parts of national forests. The administration argues repealing the so-called “roadless rule” is key to managing vegetation to better prevent wildfires on public lands.

Environmental advocates and other groups worry rescinding the rule would harm pristine habitat and the wildlife it supports, and open up more public land to industrial activities and human access that can cause more wildfires.

And locals are worried about losing access to some of the last protected natural lands in the region.

“What we're dealing with here in the roadless rule is the protection of the backcountry,” said David Browning, president of the Orange County Mountain Bike Association, “where you can actually go out and be having an experience where you don't hear traffic, where you don't see buildings, where you actually remember what it was like before all of us got here.”

In Southern California, large swaths of the Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland national forests would lose protections.

Browning, who spoke with All Things Considered host Julia Paskin on Monday, said he’s particularly concerned about the Santa Ana Mountains, where much of Orange County’s backcountry biking trails exist within a roadless area that could be opened to construction.

“Our mission is to protect and expand trail access, and so our entire agenda is to make sure that in a highly populated county, like Orange, that we have available the outdoors to be able to go and enjoy,” he said.

Browning takes issue with the wildfire argument — he pointed to the 2024 Airport Fire, which was sparked when heavy equipment operated by Orange County employees struck a rock. They were moving large boulders that day to, in part, block vehicles from getting into a dry brush area and potentially starting a fire. Browning said the “roadless rule” prevents such access that could increase the risk of fire. A recent peer-reviewed study supports that, finding that although roads are important for managing a fire once it ignites, they’re also more likely to be a place where a fire starts.

Though addressing wildfires and protecting public lands have become heavily politicized under the Trump administration, Browning thinks most locals probably aren’t as divided.

“ I don't think this is a party issue,” he said. “We want to hold onto the outdoors and protect them as best we can.”

There unfortunately isn’t much respite in sight for heat-weary Southern Californians.

Forecasters say this week’s heat wave is likely to be the hottest so far this summer. Extreme heat warnings will be in effect from the National Weather Service for almost the entire region from Tuesday morning through Friday evening.

Temperatures will peak between Tuesday and Thursday.

Highs in downtown Los Angeles are expected to reach around 100 degrees, and the warmest inland valleys will get up to 112. L.A. County beaches will hit the high 80s.

Forecasters have also issued Red Flag Warnings for the interior mountains and foothills of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Gusty winds and low humidity at higher elevations mean fires could spark and spread quickly.

At lower elevations, humidity continues to make the heat feel more sweltering and make it harder to cool down, especially at night. Nighttime temperatures will only get down to the 70s in most places, including along the coast.

A slight cooldown is expected this weekend, though forecasters say temperatures will stay above normal into next week.

The extreme heat this week poses an especially high risk of heat-related illness for people over 65, young children, people who work or spend a lot of time outside and those without access to air conditioning.

Driving the heat

Several factors are behind this week’s heat wave, many of which have also been behind the rest of this summer’s consistently hot weather.

The main driver is a high pressure air system hovering over the southwestern U.S., trapping warm air, compressing it and warming it further, and blocking cooler air from entering the region.

Offshore winds are also pushing warm inland air toward the coast, preventing cooler onshore winds from blowing inland.

“That blocks our natural air conditioning off the ocean from coming in as early as it normally does,” said Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford. “So as long as that cool air stays offshore, it heats up on land.”

The offshore winds are not strong enough, however, to significantly dry out the air in the L.A. Basin and cut down on the humidity.

“That's probably going to be around for the whole summer because you’ve got all this warm ocean water that's feeding into that,” Wofford said.

Warmer seawater evaporates faster, adding to moisture in the air and increasing humidity across the region, especially along the coasts.

Air quality warnings

Along with the heat this week, many Southern Californians also have smog to worry about.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued an ozone advisory on Monday for inland areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties, much of Riverside County and parts of San Bernardino County. It will remain in effect through Friday evening.

The multi-day smog event is in part driven by the heatwave.

Officials say ozone pollution may reach unhealthy levels or higher in the Santa Clarita Valley, parts of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino valleys, and portions of the San Bernardino Mountains.

Under unhealthy levels, it’s possible for anyone to experience adverse health effects like difficulty breathing and throat irritation. Sensitive populations could experience more serious effects.

Levels are expected to be unhealthy for sensitive groups in the San Fernando Valley, Perris Valley, Mission Viejo, Lake Elsinore, Corona, Hemet, Riverside and Pasadena.

Officials advise certain vulnerable groups — including people with heart or lung disease, those with asthma, pregnant women, children and people over 65 — to limit their time outdoors.

Officials predict that ozone levels will be lower along the coast.