(editor'snote)

Editors love to use the valuable real estate in the magazine's front yard to show off. We celebrate our latest awards, our path-blazing stories, and our stellar writers and photographers. But we seldom acknowledge those who make it all possible: you, our readers.

For you are in a class by yourselves, according to Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI), an organization whose data spur the decisions of the media buyers responsible for the billions of dollars spent on magazine advertisements each year. One important MRI measure is called "influentials." Patrick Downes, Audubon's publisher, defines influentials as "the people who actively engage in creating change in their community, their workplace, and the marketplace. Affluent, educated, and often in positions of power and leadership, they are among the nation's most important trendsetters." To be precise, you are apt to work for a political party or candidate, visit an elected official to make a case, deliver a speech, lead a community group, or express an opinion in a public forum or a letter to an editor.

What's truly impressive is not just that Audubon, based on the latest MRI research, ranks No. 1 out of all 216 measured magazines. Rather it's how far Audubon ranks ahead of the nation's most stalwart magazines. Audubon's concentration of influentials is 42 percent higher than the New Yorker's, 52 percent higher than The New York Times Magazine's, 106 percent higher than Time's, and 107 percent higher than National Geographic's.

Audubon's editors are often struck by our readers' exalted spirit of volunteerism and activism. After a workshop on California's Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge was announced in these pages, 125 registrants braved bad weather to attend. The Seattle Audubon chapter reports that a feature on natural yard landscaping in the March-April issue prompted community and faith-based groups, garden clubs, and Seattle's parks department to publicize and adopt ecologically correct practices. Following the cover story in the November-December 2001 issue on Audubon's Schoolyard Ecology program in Latin America, many excited readers wrote in to ask how they could become involved. A typical request came from Craig M. Jervis, who wants to integrate ecology lessons into the school curriculum of a small rural town in southwestern Costa Rica, where he recently moved. "Please advise on the best way to proceed," he wrote. "The education of our youth is one of the most pressing needs to save the earth."

At Audubon, we're proud you're so elite. And we're resolved to keep supporting and inspiring you as best we can in your efforts to save the earth.