(editor'snote)

"For many people these melodic, mournful criers of wind and open places, the shore birds, are perhaps the most stirring of American birds," wrote Peter Matthiessen in his classic book Wildlife in America. "One prefers to think that the last curlew fell naturally to a fox or coursing gyrfalcon in Keewatin, the land of the north wind, rather than that some farm boy in Nebraska or Saskatchewan blew it forever from the face of the earth with a single, senseless blast of a cheap gun." The Eskimo curlew, like the more famous passenger pigeon, was once among North America's most numerous birds. Then, between the 1870s and the 1890s--the blink of an eye in history's vast continuum--an ineffable tragedy occurred, as unregulated market hunters erased these birds from the skies.

How haunting and eerie it is to study the photo of the Eskimo curlew decoy created by an unknown master carver ("The Art of Deception," May-June 2002 issue) 150 years ago, before the start of the massacre. Did the carver who shaped the long, curving bill and painted the dark, rich cinnamon body admire the curlew for its beauty or its bounty? Probably a bit of both. Another image in this issue, that of a Tasmanian marsupial wolf pup preserved in a jar ("Raising the Dead"), reminds us of an Australian tragedy from 66 years ago, when the wolf was officially driven to extinction.

This nation's toughest environmental law, the Endangered Species Act, is also one of its most besieged. In this issue's Incite ("Lynx, Lies, and Media Hype"), Ted Williams tells a tale of seven scientists who, by trying to save the endangered Canada lynx, are having their reputations tarnished and their careers derailed. The biggest loser here, of course, is the lynx, which teeters on the brink of extinction.

Today the annual rate of extinction is 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than during the past half-billion years, writes E.O. Wilson in his latest book, The Future of Life. "If nothing more is done, one-fifth of all the plants and animal species now on earth could be gone or on the road to extinction by 2030." In this issue, and in future ones, Audubon is committed to doing its part to ensure that endangered species don't disappear like distant memories, preserved only as antique wood carvings or pickled specimens in jars.

POSTSCRIPT As Audubon went to press, news came that the American Society of Magazine Editors had selected it as a finalist in the 2002 National Magazine Awards in the design category. Congratulations to Audubon's ace art team: Kevin Fisher, Isabel DeSousa, and Kim Hubbard.

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