GU students go wild in Salmo-Priest film

WILDERNESS –An short film about the 43,348-acre Salmo-Priest Wilderness produced by the Friends of the Salmo-Priest will be shown with another film in a free event on Wednesday April 30, 7 p.m.,  at the Gonzaga University Jepson Center’s Wolff Auditorium.

The friends group, led by GU students, is observing the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act and the 30th anniversary of the Salmo-Priest Wilderness Area that straddles the Washington-Idaho border against the U.S.-Canada border.

The student film will be paired with “ Wild by Law: The Rise of Environmentalism and the Creation of the Wilderness Act,” a 1991 documentary that was nominated in the Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature.

• Gayne Sears, Colville National Forest district ranger, will discuss wilderness in the Pacific Northwest.

Tucked among the Selkirk Mountains in the far northeastern corner of Washington, the U-shaped Salmo-Priest Wilderness extends its borders along those of Idaho and British Columbia. Its most prominent features are two very long ridges, generally running southwest to northeast, connected near their northern ends by a ridge crowned by 6,828-foot Salmo Mountain. Water from the eastern ridge flows into Idaho’s Priest River while the remaining wilderness drains generally westerly via Sullivan Creek and the Salmo River into the Pend Oreille River.