(editor'snote)

Every so often it's necessary to return to a theme central to this magazine: hope. I was reminded of it while preparing for our recent centennial issue. In January 1973 Roger Tory Peterson, who worked on staff here as design director for many years after pioneering the modern bird guide, wrote a brief history of Audubon in its pages.“In a conservation magazine there is always danger of overpessimism. [Subscribers want] to be diverted, instructed, and entertained, not preached to. One issue, I recall, was undeniably depressing. There was an essay about the suicidal tendencies of muskrats under population pressures; another described the difficulties of winter survival of quail; a third dealt with the ecological effects of poisons—the entire issue reeked of death and destruction.”

No doubt it was a bit easier for Peterson to look on the bright side in 1973. That era was a high-water mark for environmental protection. The significance of Richard Nixon's legacy—which includes signing into law the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act—grows by the year. If there's any doubt that President George W. Bush is the anti-Nixon, think of his administration's plans for strip mining in the delicate tundra of the western Arctic, on the calving grounds of Alaska's largest caribou herd. Writes Jeff Fair (see “Bound for Tomorrow”), “Energy development has a painfully clear effect on the health of caribou. . . . Maternal cows and larger groups have difficulty crossing roads and pipelines to get to critical calving habitat or to escape insects. They run from trucks and low-flying aircraft. Migration routes are thwarted.”

Lest our “overpessimism” drive you away, come along with us to the Platte River in Nebraska (see “Showtime!”). Each spring a half-million sandhill cranes converge there for one of the world's most incredible migrations, despite the fact that most of the upper Platte's water is diverted for a range of human uses. Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary is working with nearby farmers to conserve water and has succeeded in swaying the local community to embrace the cranes as a point of civic pride and as a tourist attraction. For Michael Forsberg, a Nebraska writer and photographer, the lesson is that “no matter how much we beat up on nature, there is hope.”

Hope also springs eternal in Manhattan, as Pale Male and Lola begin to rebuild their nest to start bringing other red-tailed hawks into the world (see Audubon View, and “How the Nest Was Won”). As a native New Yorker, I knew the city was entirely on the hawks' side when the police—New York's finest—and its cab drivers—at times New York's surliest—honked their horns in support when they drove by the site. I also want to put in a plug for Pale Male the film, the best nature documentary I've ever seen. If you haven't watched it yet, it's the perfect cure for “overpessimism.”