Join the Selway-Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation (SBFC) and Rediscovered Books for a reading series featuring local and regional authors that specialize in Idaho outdoors and conservation.

This month's speaker will be Michael J. Dax, author of "Grizzly West," on Thursday, June 9 starting at 7pm.

About the book: Environmentalists and the timber industry do not often collaborate, but in the years immediately following gray wolf reintroduction in the interior American West, a plan to reintroduce grizzly bears to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana brought these odd bedfellows together. The partnership won praise from diverse interests across the country and in 2000 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a plan for reintroduction. When the Bush Administration took office, however, it promptly shelved the project.

In Grizzly West Michael J. Dax explores the political, cultural, and social forces at work in the West and around the country that gave rise to this innovative plan but also contributed to its downfall. It explores the great divide between the Old and the New West, one that has lasting consequences for the modern West and for our country's relationship with its wildlife.