Bird flu caused the death of a bald eagle named Jackie who had become an internet sensation and a symbol of the species’ recovery in California, officials said.
A necropsy and additional testing found that the primary underlying cause of Jackie’s death in August was highly pathogenic avian influenza, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said Wednesday in a news release.
In the weeks before she died, Jackie was being treated at the Ojai Raptor Center for various ailments, including anemia. Chris Eksteen, the center’s director, said in the news release that the necropsy results “have helped connect many of the findings” they saw during her hospitalization.
“In an uncommon presentation of the virus, the infection caused a severe ulcer in her stomach that led to persistent internal bleeding, anemia, and the development of bacterial sepsis,” Steve Kubiski, the disease investigations director at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, where the necropsy was conducted, said in the news release.
For more than a decade, nature lovers watched via an online video feed as Jackie and her partner, Shadow, tended to their nest each year atop trees near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. There’s no evidence Shadow is ill, according to the news release.
The nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley installed the nest camera in 2015 and documented the successes and failures of each breeding season.
