A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

For TIME Senior Writer Lance Morrow and Staff Photographer Neil Leifer, this week's cover story and picture essay on wildlife mark the culmination of seven adventurous weeks in East Africa. The assignment gave Morrow a chance to leave the routines of New York City behind and drift in the expanses of Kenya's plains and mountains, sampling "their freedom and magic spaciousness." Leifer had wanted to return to Kenya since 1984, when he snapped a runner there for TIME's picture preview of Olympic athletes. "Most of my assignments are somewhat predictable," says Leifer. "With animals, you never know."

On the plains Leifer hunted with his camera. His safari guide stalked leopards and cheetahs by carefully sifting through footprints and dung. But the hunt did not always end when the quarry was sighted. "The animals had to be in the right setting and have the right light," says Leifer. "Otherwise they'd be unphotographable." During his forays, Leifer and his assistant James Keyser were able to track down only one leopard that could be photographed. "My leopard," Leifer now proudly calls it. On the other hand, serendipity led him to his lions. One morning around 5:30, while on a bumpy search for elephants, Leifer's party suddenly spotted four lions at the roadside. Even the guide was surprised. He said he had not seen lions in the area for a long time. A member of that pride is pictured on the cover, the second Leifer cat to make it there. In 1981 his photo of a Shaded Silver American Shorthair graced the cover for TIME's look at domestic felines.

The African bush, notes Morrow, is an "unforgiving place. The lame and the careless are taken down quickly." Morrow learned the cautious local custom: while walking in the bush, warn the animals of your approach; it is when they are surprised that they tend to attack. When out alone, Morrow took to bellowing old Irish songs to alert whichever beasts might be lurking nearby. One day he headed out for some fishing in the Aberdare Mountains. "I went down the game trail to a trout stream with my fly rod in hand, singing like the Clancy Brothers," recalls Morrow, and it worked. No lions or Cape buffalo appeared. However, there was a different problem. The noise had also scared away the fish.