OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman and his wife Anna put $5.5 million toward buying the 63-acre Moon Camp shoreline at Big Bear Lake, stopping a planned 50-home marina near the Jackie and Shadow bald eagl

Key Points:

• Anna and Greg Brockman donated over $5.5 million, closing the gap on a $10 million fundraising goal to enable a land trust to purchase the 63-acre Moon Camp property at Big Bear Lake, preventing a planned luxury development of about 50 homes and a marina.
• Friends of Big Bear Valley, leveraging a global audience from their raptor nest camera, led a grassroots campaign that gathered over 25,000 mostly small donations, covering nearly half the needed funds before the Brockmans' major contribution.
• The Moon Camp site is the last undisturbed shoreline on Big Bear Lake, serving as a critical ecological corridor supporting rare plants, wildlife, and bird species, including the habitat used by the famous bald eagles Jackie and Shadow.
• The San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust completed the purchase by late July 2026, securing the land for permanent conservation and removing it from development plans approved by the county despite significant public opposition.
• The conservation effort highlights the importance of preserving mature forest and shoreline habitat essential for local wildlife, even as individual eagles like Jackie face independent survival challenges.