The woman who championed Big Bears celebrity eagles leaves behind a $10-million mission

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BIG BEAR — A bird with a striking wingspan swoops down into a towering Jeffrey pine tree and below, cheers erupt on a pontoon boat idling on Big Bear Lake.Shadow, one-half of a famous bald eagle couple, drops off a fish to his two growing chicks — something the boaters confirm thanks to a nonstop livestream of the nest.It’s a joyous moment, yet there’s an undercurrent of sadness.These watchers, including staff and volunteers with Friends of Big Bear Valley, are about to gather to honor Sandy Steers, the nonprofit’s late executive director and the force behind its nest cam.

At the same time, the organization is racing to raise $10 million by the end of July to protect a swath of land along the lake’s north shore from becoming a gated community.On Saturday, about 100 people came together at Big Bear’s Veterans Park for Steers’ memorial, as the nearby lake glittered and swallows weaved through blue skies.Recordings of the event have more than 53,000 views.

More than a dozen speakers reflected on the multifaceted Steers, a biologist who was 73 when she succumbed to cancer in February: She took race car driving lessons, worked for NASA and, most notably, turned a pair of unassuming eagles into an international phenomenon.Steers’ fierce defense of the local environment began long before its bald eagles became a digital sensation.She was a founding member of a nonprofit formed in 2001 to fight a housing development called Moon Camp.

That nonprofit would become Friends of Big Bear Valley, which, all these years later, is fundraising to stop the same project.Shelley Egan, one of two interim executive directors replacing Steers, called her predecessor “a Disney princess.” She explained, “Not that she wore the gowns and stuff like that, but she fed the animals, she fed the birds, she invited them onto her porch, into her home, onto her hand.” Others painted her...