The Kinnikinnick Native Plant Society will kick of its free monthly presentations for the year on Jan. 25.

Co-sponsored by KNPS and Sandpoint Parks & Recreation, the presentations cover a variety of natural resource related topics ranging from wildflower identification to forest tree management to mushroom gathering.

The program runs from 9:45-11:30 a.m. on the fourth Saturday of the month, September through June except for December.

Speaking this month are Preston Andrews, Phil Hough and Ken Thacker on native plant conservation and KNPS.

Andrews is the current program coordinator and member of the board of KNPS. He is an emeritus professor of horticulture from Washington State University, where his research focused on sustainability and the environmental physiology of woody plants. He is active in citizen science and a volunteer for several local organizations. He has a keen interest in the adaption of native plants to human disturbance and a changing climate.

Thacker is the current board president of the Kinnikinnick Native Plant Society. He has lived, worked and played in the wild parts of the northern Rocky Mountain region for nearly 50 years. Since retiring from the Bureau of Land Management in 2004, Thacker has been running a weed control business and is widely known by many people in the Sandpoint area only as “The Weed Guy.”

Hough is a past president of KNPS and a former co-chair of their Conservation Committee. He is a member of the Idaho Panhandle Forest Collaborative and the North Idaho Resources Advisory Council. He also co-hosts a radio talk show on conservation and outdoor recreation on Sandpoint’s community radio station, KRFY. Phil is one of the founders and current executive director of the Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness, and a founding board member of the Idaho Trails Association.

Information: nativeplantsociety.org