EDITOR'S LETTER

editor's letter The Land of Ahhhs

It wasn't a competition. "Hey, let's see which county in Arizona is the most beautiful." It wasn't like that. It was more like: "Here's an idea - something we've never done. Let's do a portfolio featuring the most scenic places in the state. And let's map it out by counties."

After 90 years, there aren't a lot of things we haven't done in the magazine. This month's cover story is a first.

In theory, it was pretty simple. There are only 15 counties in Arizona, compared with 254 in Texas, and zeroing in on the most scenic spot in each couldn't be that difficult. That's what we thought. And then the photos started rolling in. We knew there were beautiful landscapes all around the state, but even those places that are stereotyped as desolate surprised us: Wow. Toroweap is in Mohave County?... I had no idea Yuma County could be so lush. How can a county as small as Santa Cruz have such broad panoramas? There were a lot of surprises; however, there weren't any in Coconino County.

It wasn't a competition, but no matter where you live, you have to agree that Coconino is the Land of Ahhhs in Arizona. Consider what's within its county lines: Sedona, the San Francisco Peaks, Havasu Falls, Havasu Creek, Oak Creek Canyon, Sycamore Canyon, Walnut Canyon, Marble Canyon, the Mogollon Rim, Sunset Crater, the Vermilion Cliffs, Kendrick Peak, Bill Williams Mountain and the Kaibab Plateau. Most of the Grand Canyon is in Coconino County, too. The Grand Canyon.

For the portfolio, we had to choose one. It was like Sophie's choice on Wal-nton's Mountain. In the end, we went with Havasu Creek - the Canyon ended up in Mohave County, we put the Peaks on our cover and Sedona on the back cover. If you're a longtime reader, you know that we feature Havasu a lot - the creek, the canyon, the waterfalls - but the photo you'll see inside isn't typical. It's a gor-geous shot of the creek just before it emp-ties into the Colorado River. It's one of many spectacular images in The Best of Ari-zona, which opens with a panoramic shot of Big Lake. The lake is one of the scenic highlights in Apache County. It's on a list that includes Canyon de Chelly, Baldy Peak, the Petrified Forest and several packs of Mexican wolves. Mexican wolves are an endangered species that was eliminated from the United States in the 1970s. As Annette McGivney writes in Ba'cho, "the wolves' stellar hunting ability, which made them revered by the Apaches, made them despised by Euro-pean ranchers and homesteaders who viewed the predators as a threat to their livelihood."

In 1998, the wolves, a species native to Arizona, were reintroduced to the state when 11 captive-bred animals were released into the Blue Range Primitive Area. The 4.4 million-acre recovery area, which initially was limited to national forest land, was expanded in 2000 when the White Mountain Apache Tribe opened its 1.7 million acres to the wolves. Longtime Tribal Chairman Ronnie Lupe says he joined the reintroduction pro-gram because "he wanted to hear wolves howl again on tribal land."

As you might expect, it's a polarizing issue, one that pits elders and tradition-alists against outfitters and big-game hunters. In her story, Annette spells out the dichotomy. She also recounts her time in the field with Jeff Dolphin, an Arizona Game and Fish biologist whose official title is interagency field-team supervi-sor for the Mexican Wolf Blue Range Reintroduction Project.

Around our office, he's known as "Jeff Dolphin the Wolf Man." Annette calls him a "wolf whisperer." I met Jeff last summer on Baldy Peak, and I don't think he could care less what you call him. He's more focused on his wolves - he's had more hands-on contact with them than anyone, and he "can describe the activities of individual wolves the way neighbors catch each other up on gossip."

When you're working with endangered species, there's no such thing as nine-to-five. It's true for Jeff Dol-phin. And it's also true for Chris Parish.

Chris is a wildlife biologist for The Peregrine Fund. He covers a lot of ground, but his focus is the reintroduction of California condors. Specifically, he oversees the annual release of young condors over the Vermilion Cliffs. In Wing Commander by Noah Austin, you'll learn more about Chris and the work he's doing. And in Rare Birds, the portfolio that follows, you'll see some of the best condor images we've ever published. The photographer is John Sherman.

"I've photographed about a third of the Arizona population," he says, "which, at last count, numbered 74. I got rare permission to join the biologists at the release site. Otherwise, it's off-limits to the public." That's why his shots are so good. He has access. He also spends hundreds of hours in the field, scanning the cliffs and staring at the sky.

For the rest of us, he says, the best locations for seeing wild condors are Navajo Bridge, which crosses the Colorado River at Marble Canyon, and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It's not a competition, but in case you're keeping score, both of those places are in Coconino County.

COMING IN SEPTEMBER ...

A look at the Little Colorado River, from its beginning near Greer to its confluence with the Colorado River, and the winners of our 2015 photo contest.