A HUGE Thank you to everyone in the forum who took the time submitting comments to the Forest Service last October regarding saving Big Bear Eagles Jackie & Shadow's nesting neighborhood from housing development. This would ultimately cause our Eagle family to abandon their nest and leave the area.
Great news update from FOBBV Friends of Big Bear Valley's legal action below...
3/12/2022 via Facebook
Friends of Big Bear Valley and Big Bear Eagle Nest Cam
friendsofbigbearvalley.orgBesides having an awesome baby chick to show off to the world,
Jackie and Shadow would like to announce some other great news!
—
Friends of Big Bear Valley WON the legal action they filed against the County for approving the Moon Camp housing development without sufficient environmental analysis. With the court’s ruling, the County’s approval of this development must be withdrawn until further environmental analysis is done.
. This controversial project, a
50-home luxury housing development, was planned for a now beautifully forested
64 acres less than a mile from Jackie and Shadow’s nest! This area currently serves as foraging habitat for Jackie and Shadow to be able to feed their new little chick. The site is so close it can be seen in the background from the nest camera.
. Besides being habitat for our
bald eagles, a fully protected species under California law, this land also hosts other protected species, such as the
San Bernardino flying squirrel and rare plant species. The court ruling stated that the
environmental study for the development failed to consider wildfire evacuation conditions and did not mitigate the project’s harms to the
ash-grey paintbrush and pebble plain habitat, a habitat and species that exist
only in
Big Bear Valley, and nowhere else in the world..
Friends of Big Bear Valley was joined by 2 other conservation groups—the Center for Biological Diversity and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society—in filing this action. We would like to
thank everyone involved, including our awesome environmental attorneys at the law office of Babak Naficy.
.
What’s next? – the developer could file an appeal to this ruling (we will know in the next few weeks whether this happens)
-- the developer could re-do the environmental impact report to include the analyses that the court says are missing and request a new project approval from the County
. Friends of Big Bear Valley has been working in the background on a third option…
-- having the land purchased for conservation.
We have been diligently working on this option for the past year and will continue pushing forward with this ongoing process. We will give more details as we are able, but please focus lots of good wishes on this option coming to fruition.
.
Huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to and supported us in this work to stop this development. We are very grateful to each and every one of you! Sandy
PS, for anyone interested in more, you can check our website about the legal action
https://www.friendsofbigbearvalley.org/jackie-shadow.../ and here is a link to the press release sent out by the Center for Biological Diversity:
https://biologicaldiversity.org/.../california-court.../Courtesy of FOBBV https://www.friendsofbigbearvalley.org/
The opinions presented do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV).
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Topic: Big Bear Lake Bald Eagles (Read 47593 times)