(editor'snote)

"This makes me mad," fumed Kevin Fisher, Audubon's design director, as he chose photos for this issue's feature on Alaska's Tongass National Forest ("Land of the Giants"). What set off everyone involved in this story, from Fisher to John Schoen, the Audubon biologist on the ground in Alaska, defies belief. The timber industry is poised to log a good part of the nation's remaining old-growth forests—trees that are wider than a man is tall and that were standing before Columbus came to North America. Not only is this happening on public lands, but taxpayers are footing the bill—$14 million in 2002 alone. Maybe worst of all, most of these venerable trees end up being turned into nothing more than everyday building materials like floor joists. It makes about as much sense as grinding Carrara marble into lime dust to spread on your garden.

As Audubon's "Incite" columnist, Ted Williams has a singular talent: He inflames readers' passions. In this issue he rises to the occasion with a scathing indictment of this nation's fisheries management—such as it is ("The Exhausted Sea"). Williams documents how we are spiraling down the food chain as if there were no tomorrow. But true to form, he offers a number of sensible prescriptions to save the seas.

At Audubon, we strive to offer solutions, following the conservationist's credo that if you oppose, you must propose—no matter how bleak the situation seems. As John F. Kennedy said, "Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."

Rays of hope shine through on these pages. There are nine volunteers from Montana's Five Valleys Audubon and Bitterroot Audubon chapters surveying black-backed woodpeckers in the Bitterroot National Forest (Field Notes, "Follow That Blaze"); dozens of volunteers at the new Dungeness River Audubon Center in Washington working to protect endangered salmon ("Spawning Hope"); and thousands of volunteers across the country amassing critical bird data on their computers (see the "Home Is Where the Birds Are" box in "Living on the Edges"). How is it possible to lapse into hopelessness when these volunteer armies are devoting their nights and weekends to the cause?

Few men I've met personify this spirit of selflessness more than Donal C. O'Brien Jr., who is about to step down after nearly a quarter-century as a national board member for Audubon, including almost 15 as chair (Audubon in Action, "A Conservationist to His Core"). Donal has been a tireless champion of Audubon, both in its boon years and its lean years, out of deep reverence for its 105-year history and for the causes he and it have embraced, chief among them the preservation of bird and wildlife habitat. Knowing he'll be as active as ever, firing off notes on various issues and crisscrossing the country to take stands, is as unchangeable and reassuring a certainty as any I know.