At Big Bear Lake in Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman and his wife Anna spent $5.5 million to purchase 63 acres of shoreline land, halting a planned 50-home marina development that would have encroached upon the nesting territory of Jackie and Shadow, a resident bald eagle pair. The act is a quiet but consequential one — a private transaction standing in for the slower machinery of regulation and public advocacy. It raises an enduring question that runs beneath the surface of conservation history: when the wild things need protecting, who bears the