(editor'snote)

This winter’s skin-bracing chills across much of the nation are now a memory. It’s spring—time to head outdoors and heed Field Editor Kenn Kaufman’s advice to go butterflying. Maybe you’ll spy “the hackberry emperors and question marks landing on tree trunks and then zooming away with wing flicks and quick glides” (see “I Brake for Butterflies”). In the far north, Jeff Fair, a biologist and writer, celebrates the yellow-billed loon, “whose wail breaks the silence beneath the wide Arctic sky—a cry almost wolflike, with the tenor of a bassoon in its upper ranges” (see “Cry of the Loon”). These scenes of nature’s tranquillity, the quintessence of Audubon, are what we strive for in every issue. Contrary to a few irate readers, we do not set out to exploit environmental anxieties to increase our audience or donations. In fact, we don’t make the news, but as a serious environmental magazine, we’re obligated to report it. Some have accused us of being too hard on President Bush; far more often, we’re accused of being too soft on him. In this issue’s Letters column, Kevin Pierce, from Clinton Township, Michigan, writes, “Shame on you, Audubon, for once again letting your partisan Republicanism slip through.” (For the record, Audubon is strictly nonpartisan.)

As we were putting the final touches on our yellow-billed loon story, Audubon Alaska’s executive director, Stan Senner, was working hard to protect habitat critical to the beleaguered bird’s survival. He and other environmentalists fashioned a pragmatic compromise to permit drilling on all but a tiny part of the national petroleum reserve where the loons and other wildlife live. About 99 percent of the 97,000 people who weighed in supported this plan. But not the administration. “They are completely unyielding,” fumes the normally mild-mannered Senner. “Instead of finding opportunities that would balance their proposal, they’re simply charging ahead with energy as the single-minded goal.”

One of the axioms of presidential politics is that candidates tack toward the center on issues like the environment for November elections. For example, in 1984 Ronald Reagan signed into law more wilderness bills—19—than any other president ever had. Will the current White House take his cue? Its policies on a host of issues don’t inspire a lot of confidence, even if there’s one glimmer of hope. In December the administration announced that it was dropping plans to remove federal protection for many streams, wetlands, ponds, and other waters that have been protected by the Clean Water Act for 30 years. Audubon applauds this sound decision, as it will any others this year. But maybe Kevin Pierce has a point: “A drop in the bucket doesn’t put out a fire.”