ALONG WITH NWF’S three children’s magazines, National Wildlife recently received the first-ever Longtime Leader Award for its efforts to produce publications using environmentally responsible practices. The award was presented to NWF by SustainPrint.com, an industry website operated by Publishing Executive magazine that focuses on conservation issues. “We believe that leaders in environmental sustainability efforts deserve recognition,” says Noelle Skodzinski, the company’s editor in chief.

At NWF, reducing the environmental impact of our magazines is a mandatory part of our publishing process. In recent years, we’ve taken steps to decrease the amount of paper used for each issue and to increase the amount of recycled content of our pages to save energy and natural resources. We’ve also switched to paper produced without chlorine, which generates harmful pollution during the bleaching process, and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which guarantees that virgin pulp comes from trees grown and harvested using sustainable practices. And we’ve worked with our printer, Quad/Graphics, to boost the amount of nonpolluting vegetable-based inks we use.

These are just some of the measures we’ve implemented without sacrificing reproduction quality of the photos you’ll see on the following pages. Among other things, this issue includes images by biologist Merlin Tuttle, the nation’s premier bat photographer and one of the world’s leading bat scientists.

Tuttle, who began studying the animals in the late 1950s, spent years conducting research in some of the world’s most remote regions, including isolated U.S. caves. “Wherever I went, it was impossible to ignore the fact that bats were declining at alarming rates,” he says.

In 1979, he was asked to author a chapter about bats in a new book. “When I saw the accompanying photos,” he says, “I was appalled that nearly all of them showed snarling bats, a posture the animals display only in self-defense.” At that moment, Tuttle began mastering photography to show the creatures in a new light. “I’ve discovered,” he says, “that people’s negative attitudes about bats can be changed in minutes when they simply see how fascinating these animals can be.”

Soon afterwards, Tuttle founded the group Bat Conservation International, which has since made significant strides in protecting bats and debunking myths about them. You can read about one of his organization’s projects, and view some of his photos, in the article “Drinking on the Fly.”