Wilderness expert to speak

Doug Scott, one of the nation’s leading experts on wilderness, will be touring the Inland Northwest at the end of October to discuss local efforts to protect wilderness, including the ongoing work to create North Idaho’s first congressionally designated wilderness area in the Scotchman Peaks east of Sandpoint.

Scott is the policy director for the Campaign for America’s Wilderness and author of “The Enduring Wilderness.” He is also widely considered to be America’s leading historian on the wilderness movement, said Phil Hough, a resident of Sagle, Idaho, and chairman of Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness.

“There’s no one more knowledgeable than Doug Scott about wilderness,” Hough said, adding that Scott has been directly involved in the creation of about half the nation’s wilderness areas.

Scott will be in Coeur d’Alene at North Idaho College’s Student Union Building at 6 p.m. Thursday. He will be in Sandpoint at 7 p.m. Friday at the County Historical Society Museum. At 7 p.m. Oct. 30, Scott will be at Gonzaga University’s Cataldo Hall in the Globe Room.

Scott will also visit Troy at 7 p.m. Saturday at The Hot Club. On Oct. 29 at 11 a.m., he will be at Scotchmans Coffeehouse in Clark Fork, Idaho. At 1 p.m. the same day, he will be at the Market Café in Hope. At 6 p.m. that day, Scott will be at the Heron School, in Heron, Mont.