Sandy Steers Dies at 73:Friends of Big Bear Valley Executive Director and Voice of Beloved Eagles Jackie and Shadow Passes Away, Leaving Legacy of Wildlife Conservation and Global Community.

Sandy Steers Death and Obituary: The Heart Behind the Big Bear Eagle Nest Cam, Champion of Jackie and Shadow, Passes Away at 73

It began not with a camera, but with a woman looking up. From her home in the San Bernardino Mountains, Sandy Steers spent countless hours watching a massive stick nest perched 145 feet high in a Jeffrey pine tree, wondering what was happening inside. She wondered about the eagles she could barely see, about the eggs they might be warming, about the stories unfolding far above the forest floor of Big Bear Valley.

On the evening of February 11, 2026, that watchful vigil came to a close. Sandy Steers, the 73-year-old executive director and guiding spirit of Friends of Big Bear Valley, passed away, leaving behind a global family of millions who never met her in person but knew her instantly by her voice—calm, knowledgeable, and deeply reverent of the natural world .

Her death, confirmed by the organization she led for more than a decade, has sent ripples of grief across continents. From schoolchildren in California who named eaglets through classroom votes to retirees in Japan who watched the live stream with morning coffee, from wildlife biologists to casual viewers who found solace in the daily rhythms of two bald eagles named Jackie and Shadow—all of them lost a trusted guide .

The Woman Who Gave Us a Window

Sandy Steers did not set out to become an internet phenomenon. When she first proposed installing a camera in the eagles’ nest in 2015, her motivation was simple: curiosity. “I wanted to see what was going on in the nest,” she told CBC Kids News in a 2025 interview. “So I talked to our board and we raised the money to be able to put up this camera so everybody could see what was in there” .

That modest goal exploded into something she never anticipated. The Big Bear Eagle Nest Cam, streaming 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on YouTube, has attracted hundreds of millions of views over the past decade. Viewers have watched Jackie and Shadow incubate eggs through blizzard conditions, defend their territory from intruders, and raise chicks against staggering odds. They have also witnessed heartbreaking losses—eggs that never hatched, chicks that perished in snowstorms, a clutch devoured by ravens on live camera .

Through every triumph and tragedy, Steers was there to interpret. She explained brood patches and pipping, crop storage and nestorations. She taught audiences that eagles turn their eggs once an hour to prevent embryos from sticking to the shells. She described the peal call—a sharp, urgent vocalization—that Jackie emits when danger approaches .

But more than the facts, Steers offered perspective. When viewers mourned lost eggs, she gently reminded them that nature operates on different terms than human sentiment. “We should allow ourselves to be fascinated by nature, even when it seems hard or unfair,” she said. “I love that everybody is so invested in this and that they’re opening their mind and opening their ideas and their emotions to nature” .

Jackie and Shadow: A Love Story, Narrated

The eagles themselves became characters under Steers’ thoughtful narration. Jackie, the 13-year-old female, she described as watchful and protective, a devoted mother who once sat on her eggs for nearly 62 consecutive hours during an atmospheric river storm rather than abandon them to the elements . Shadow, her mate since 2018, Steers portrayed as the adoring husband—the one who brings fish to the nest, who gingerly rolls eggs with his beak, who looked bewildered when three eggs suddenly appeared and his legs wouldn’t stretch around them all .

“There’s a lot of thought that goes into this,” Steers said of the eagles’ nest-building. “They’re not just grabbing random sticks. They have this vision in their mind” .

She understood that what drew people to the live stream was not ornithology but relationship. “I think people can connect with it and root for them because they don’t hide anything,” Steers observed. “Whether they’re upset, sad or joyful, the camera captures it all” .

This was Steers’ great gift: she helped viewers recognize themselves in the birds. The long wait for eggs that never hatch. The persistence through repeated disappointment. The partnership required to sustain a family. The joy when something finally, miraculously goes right.

The Miracle Year of 2025

After three years of failed nests, 2025 became a season of redemption—and Steers was there to chronicle it. In late January, Jackie laid three eggs. For 35 days, the world watched and waited. On March 3, the first pip appeared: a small crack in an eggshell, visible through the high-definition camera that Steers and her team had installed. By March 4, two chicks had emerged .

“I was just so in awe and excited,” Steers said. Tens of thousands of viewers watched simultaneously as Jackie and Shadow met their new hatchlings .

A third chick hatched days later but did not survive a snowstorm—a loss Steers helped viewers process with characteristic grace. She emphasized the two that lived, the eaglets later named Sunny and Gizmo through votes cast by Big Bear Valley third-graders .

Throughout spring 2025, Steers provided regular updates on the growing eaglets. “They’re developing outward expanding,” she explained in late April. “Gaining their balance… investigating secure in themselves. Right now they are winter sizing flapping their wings, stand up on their own feet. Stay standing. Working on being able to eat on their own” .

It was classic Steers: patient, precise, and suffused with quiet wonder at ordinary miracles.

A Conservationist Beyond Eagles

While Jackie and Shadow made Steers famous, her conservation work extended far beyond one nest. Friends of Big Bear Valley, under her leadership, protected approximately 15 miles of the valley ecosystem . She championed rare and endangered species, including a threatened paintbrush flower listed on both federal and state endangered registers—a plant that exists nowhere else on earth except Big Bear Valley .

In 2023, the Outdoor Writers Association of California nominated Steers for Outdoor Californian of the Year. “Sandy Steers truly exemplifies the spirit of the outdoors through her efforts to conserve the natural environment while helping to enhance and expand opportunities for outdoor recreation in California,” wrote nominator Barbara Steinberg. “Her efforts to preserve nesting sites for Big Bear Lake bald eagles and open space in the region including helping to save a rare pebble plain and a threatened paintbrush flower” .

The nomination recognized what those closest to her already knew: Steers was not merely an eagle enthusiast but a serious, effective advocate for an entire ecosystem. She understood that protecting Jackie and Shadow meant protecting the Jeffrey pines, the lake, the surrounding forest, and the intricate web of life that sustained them all.

The July 4th Battle

One of Steers’ final public battles came in July 2025, when she opposed a fireworks display scheduled near the eagles’ nesting territory. With Sunny and Gizmo only recently fledged and still learning to fly, Steers warned that nighttime explosions could prove catastrophic.

“Eagles flying at night is really dangerous,” she said. “They have worse night vision than we do” .

Her concerns were vindicated when the fireworks sent Jackie and Shadow fleeing into darkness. The adult eagles disappeared for days. Steers, monitoring the empty nest camera, issued public statements blending scientific explanation and barely concealed heartbreak: “We will all be sending out hope for their speedy return” .

They did return, as eagles do. But the episode revealed Steers’ unwavering commitment to speaking truth on behalf of wildlife, even when it meant confronting popular events and civic traditions. She was never confrontational, never strident—simply persistent, armed with data and deep love for the creatures she protected.

The Voice That Will Echo

Those who worked alongside Steers describe her as unusually present. In an era of performative conservation and social media activism, she avoided the spotlight despite the cameras trained constantly on her subjects. Her Instagram posts, written in the collective voice of Friends of Big Bear Valley, were informative rather than self-promotional. When she appeared on television, she directed attention to the eagles, not herself .

“She helped audiences process moments of loss and change in the natural world, reminding them that release, survival, and renewal are essential parts of life in the wild,” reads the tribute from her organization. “Because of her, many did not simply watch the eagles, they understood them.”

This understanding extended across generations. Schoolchildren who participated in naming contests for eaglets—Spirit in 2022, Sunny and Gizmo in 2025—learned about biology, ecology, and the satisfaction of civic participation. Elderly viewers confined to their homes found connection and continuity in the daily rhythms of the nest. Parents watching with children discovered opportunities to discuss life, death, and resilience .

Steers was keenly aware of this multigenerational audience. “I think people find themselves doing a lot of things that Jackie and Shadow do, which is getting along, working together and taking care of each other,” she reflected .

The Nest Continues

As news of Steers’ death spread, the live stream continued uninterrupted. Jackie and Shadow, unaware of the human drama unfolding below their nest, went about their routines. They preened on familiar branches, surveyed their territory, and perhaps contemplated the coming nesting season.

This continuity feels appropriate. Steers spent her final decade teaching people to find meaning in the ordinary persistence of wild creatures. The eagles do not mourn as humans mourn. They do not stop because one woman is no longer watching. They simply continue—incubating, hunting, feeding, surviving.

But for the human community Steers built, the loss is incalculable. Millions of viewers who never met her feel suddenly orphaned, their connection to the nest filtered through her absence. The voice that explained pipping and brood patches, that offered comfort after ravens devoured eggs, that celebrated each hard-won hatchling—that voice has fallen silent.

What Endures

Sandy Steers is survived by her colleagues at Friends of Big Bear Valley, by the global community she nurtured, and by the eagles whose lives she illuminated. She is also survived by something less tangible but equally real: a different way of seeing.

Before Steers, the nest was simply a nest. The eagles were simply birds. The camera was simply technology. She transformed these elements into something approaching communion. Thousands of people now watch bald eagles and think not of predators or statistics but of Jackie’s fierce maternal devotion, Shadow’s patient attentiveness, the improbable survival of chicks named by children.

This is Sandy Steers’ enduring legacy. She did not save every egg or protect every eaglet. She could not prevent snowstorms or fireworks or the hard mathematics of predation. What she did, day after day, year after year, was help people care more deeply about creatures they would never touch.

In her 2023 nomination for Outdoor Californian of the Year, Barbara Steinberg wrote: “Sandy Steers truly exemplifies the spirit of the outdoors.” The compliment is genuine, yet it captures only part of her contribution. Steers exemplified not merely the spirit of the outdoors but the spirit of attention—the willingness to look at one thing, for years, and find infinite variety in its constancy.

The View From Above

On February 11, 2026, the night Sandy Steers died, the nest camera recorded ordinary footage. Jackie and Shadow, if they were visible at all, would have appeared as dark shapes against fading light. The Jeffrey pine would have swayed slightly in mountain air. Somewhere in the valley, fish moved through cold water, and paintbrush flowers waited for spring, and a community of humans began to absorb the loss of the woman who taught them to watch.

It is tempting toward metaphor—to imagine Steers finally seeing what Jackie and Shadow see from 145 feet, or to picture her spirit ascending toward that nest. But Sandy Steers was not given to sentimentality. She was a scientist and educator who respected facts too much to embellish them.

The facts are these: A woman lived 73 years. She loved eagles. She installed a camera. Millions watched. She died. The eagles continue.

But between those facts lies everything that matters—the countless individual lives she touched, the understanding she cultivated, the model she provided of intelligent, compassionate engagement with the natural world. Sandy Steers did not just document Jackie and Shadow. She made them matter to people who might otherwise have never looked up.

Now it is our turn to look. The camera still streams. The nest still holds. The eagles still return. And somewhere in Big Bear Valley, a Jeffrey pine stretches toward sky, sheltering life that continues its ancient cycles of loss and renewal—just as Sandy Steers taught us to understand.