BY KAREN BOSSICK

Are we protecting wilderness from visitors with management strategies that may make them unwelcome?

That’s the question local author and international natural resource consultant Cindy Chojnacky will probe during a free presentation at 5:30 tonight—Thursday, Feb. 20—at the Hailey Public Library.

Chojnacky and her husband, a specialist in forest biometrics, have visited 60 eastern and western wilderness areas during the past seven years. And they’ve learned that most wilderness is unknown and rarely visited while a few well-known areas are trammeled, including parts of the Sawtooth Wilderness north of Sun Valley.

Chojnacky will accompany her talk with photos form wilderness areas throughout the United States. And she will read from sections of her 2019 dystopian youth fantasy “Return to the Wilds,” in which teens from a giant urban area are sent on a dangerous mission to save remnant wild lands from a plot to destroy them.

Chojnacky spent her formative years in Nevada and Arizona before getting a B.S. degree in journalism and a M.S. degree in environmental politics.

She has worked in public affairs and policy in Washington D.C., and served as a forest ranger in Santa Barbara, Calif., before assisting her husband on forestry projects in Cambodia, Lebanon and the United States.