A decade ago, The Wilderness Society, the most effective conservation group in Australia's history, plunged into mediocrity and irrelevance. Failing Nature tells the story of how a few bushwalkers and nature lovers organised to prevent a dam on a wild river, prevailed and then expanded nationally and internationally to advocate on behalf of the living world. For several decades, and especially under the leadership of Alec Marr, The Wilderness Society defined the meaning of protecting nature in Australia. But behind TWS's success lay an internal struggle between nature conservation and social justice. A coup, driven by envy and ambition, left a wreck that encourages hysteria over climate change, a religious obsession with sorry rituals, cowardice in the face of the vast multiplying of human numbers and a convulsive neglect of nature conservation. Bill Lines' book challenges this emerging ethos and invites the reader to reconsider where nature stands in this beautiful land.