The Editor's Desk

When NEWSWEEK's Africa bureau chief, Scott Johnson, went out with a patrol in Congo's Virunga National Park to investigate the killing of rare mountain gorillas, what he and photographer Brent Stirton found was far worse than they had expected. Near the edge of the forest four members of the same gorilla family had been shot at close range, possibly the worst such slaughter in 25 years. Both Johnson and Stirton are experienced war journalists. Yet they were still taken aback by the scene. Two things in particular struck them. One was how human the great animals seemed in death; a 600-pound male silverback lay with one hand across his chest, as if he had just been beating it. The other was the tenderness with which the rangers treated the bodies. The next day more than 100 villagers followed them into the jungle, built huge stretchers from tree trunks and then uncomplainingly carried the gorillas back to camp—a three-hour walk. "I've never seen a demonstration of compassion like that from the Congolese people before," says Stirton.

Both those qualities shine through Stirton's powerful photographs, which we publish this week in our cover story on new threats to the world's animal population. For better or for worse, such images of the brutality done to animals are often what draw our attention to human tragedies. In this case, as Johnson's account of the killings makes clear, the gorillas are caught up in the same tribal tensions and bloody competition for resources that led to the deaths of more than 4 million people in Congo in the past decade. But as science writer Sharon Begley notes, their deaths are also part of a larger trend. After decades in which conservationists worried that development was destroying habitats around the world, they now say the major threat to many endangered species is outright hunting. In Virunga, a population of hippos that once numbered several hundred thousand has dwindled to as few as 350—killed mostly for their meat.

Here at home, Campaign '08 is moving into new territory. After squabbling at a recent debate over who had the experience to be president, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama took their spat on the road. Clinton called Obama "naive" for saying he'd be willing to meet with dictators like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Obama fired back by calling her "Bush-Cheney lite." But as Richard Wolffe reports, the Democratic dustup was more than just the usual political tit for tat. It posed a larger question: what does "experience" really mean when selecting a president?

And this week we inaugurate a series of conversations in which NEWSWEEK International Editor Fareed Zakaria will quiz thinkers and executives on the future of energy. Zakaria interviews Amory Lovins, the Rocky Mountain Institute's cofounder and chairman and an inveterate optimist about alternative energy sources.

—Daniel Klaidman

© 2007