While in the past Australians wrestled with what the Reef is, today they are struggling to reconcile what it will be … To do this, we need to understand the Reef' s intertwining human story. The Great Barrier Reef has come to dominate Australian imaginations and global environmental politics. Saving the Reef charts the social history of Australia' s most prized yet vulnerable environment, from the relationship between First Nations peoples and colonial settlers, to the Reef' s most portentous moment – the Save the Reef campaign launched in the 1960s. Through this gripping narrative and interwoven contemporary essays, historian Rohan Lloyd reveals how the Reef' s continued decline is forcing us to reconsider what ' saving' the Reef really means.