I n 1951, the Nature Conservancy was launched in Washington DC, reborn from its prototype, the Ecologists’ Union. Its first, barely paid, director was George Fell. With his fellow naturalist and wife, Barbara, Fell had bankrolled the fledging organization with US$300. Today, the conservancy is one of the world’s biggest conservation bodies, with annual revenues of about $1 billion in 2014. Fell, meanwhile, seems to have fallen out of history: there is little mention of him online, even on the charity’s website. Yet, as Arthur Pearson explains in his thought-provoking biography Force of Nature, Fell articulated a vision of biodiversity protection that is as current today as it was nearly 70 years ago. As Pearson relates, much of Fell’s career was inauspicious. At school, he was an average student. As an adult, he was uncom- promising, single-minded and prone to picking political fights he would not win. He lost jobs with regularity. His genius, how- ever, was in advocating nature conservation where it mattered the most. Ultimately, the Fells understood natural history and the special places where rare and unique species survived in one of North America’s most massively changed landscapes. Against the egos of politicians and populist agendas, they stood firm. Nature is destiny for those who study the environment. What we study mat- ters, whether it’s ants or birds, and where we study matters vitally. Some envi- ronmentalists find that the grandeur of the American West inspires a passion for protecting large tracts of wilderness. For Fell, it was Illinois, and the defining experience was looking for plants — especially ferns — in what little remained of its natural habitats. During their court- ship, the Fells became concerned about local environmental degradation, “driving around the state in search of remnant natural areas”. Illinois, the ‘prairie state’, lies east of the Mississippi River, yet its original grasslands were more typical of the West. In the early nineteenth century, the state had 10 mil- lion hectares of prairie; by 1978, there were fewer than 2,300. The state’s population of the iconic greater prairie chicken (Tympa- nuchus cupido) plummeted from 30,000 in 1940 to fewer than 2,000 by 1960 (today, there are no more than 200). Illinois did not get the break of eastern US forests, which partially recovered from the late nineteenth century onwards as people abandoned poor- quality land and moved west to plough the prairies. Nor was it spared like the deserts and mountains of the far west, which sup- port few people. Illinois is a tough place to conserve biodiversity. During Fell’s tenure at the conservancy, he and Barbara believed that its future must be as a confederation of state chapters. Each would remain powerful in defend- ing its own priorities, but as a federation the national office would have supremacy. Board members disagreed and, in a divisive election in 1958, Fell lost his bid to become ENVIRONMENT Hero of local conservation Stuart Pimm learns about the man behind the world’s largest conservation body. George Fell (right) and Barbara Fell (centre) scouting in Okefenokee Swamp, between Georgia and Florida, with a guide. Force of Nature: George Fell, Founder of the Natural Areas Movement ARTHUR M. PEARSON University of Wisconsin Press: 2017. NATURAL LAND INSTITUTE 158 | NATURE | VOL 544 | 13 APRIL 2017 BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT ©2017MacmillanPublishersLimited,partofSpringerNature.Allrightsreserved.