THE bitter internal dispute that has split the Wilderness Society has widened after management engaged lawyers to try to shut down Saturday's meeting of disaffected members and staff.
The Sunday Age revealed last week that the 45,000-member organisation had been torn apart by an internal rift. The majority of the group's campaigners are calling on seasoned executive director Alec Marr to step down amid claims of bullying, money wasting and secret board meetings.
The threat of legal action comes as Karen Alexander, one of the co-founders of the Wilderness Society in Melbourne, said she was appalled over the actions of Mr Marr and his management.
''There seems to be something horrendously wrong at the management committee level,'' she said.
Meanwhile, sources have told The Sunday Age that Greens leader and Wilderness Society co-founder Bob Brown is working behind the scenes to settle the dispute, although he declined to publicly comment last week.
The dispute came to a head last year when the society's national campaign committee passed a vote of no-confidence in Mr Marr. When he refused to stand down, 144 staff signed a petition on Christmas Eve to remove Mr Marr.
Staff and members complain that Mr Marr and his management have overseen a culture of intimidation, high staff-turnover and large amounts of donors' money - now at $15 million annually - wasted on consultants.
Thirty members have organised the Melbourne meeting to try to remove the board elected at a controversial and secretive annual meeting in November. Only a handful of people knew about the AGM, which Mr Marr announced to staff in December.
At the meeting, the board, which backs Mr Marr, voted to change the constitution so that 4500 members were required to call a special general meeting, rather than the previous 20.
Management argues that under the new rules, the Melbourne meeting has no legal basis as it has been called by only 30 members.
On Friday, Sydney legal firm HolmanWebb sent letters to the 30 members requesting they cancel the meeting and instead engage in arbitration, led either by Michael Shand, QC, John Dixon, SC, or Neil Brown, QC, three Melbourne barristers.
On Wednesday, the society's chief operating officer, Michael Connors, sent a letter to the 30 members warning that the meeting would ''greatly damage [the Wilderness Society's] position in the eyes of the public''.
In the letter, obtained by The Sunday Age, Mr Connors said if the meeting was not cancelled, management ''may take steps to restrain the holding of that meeting pending arbitration of the dispute''.
''Such steps will result in substantial costs being incurred by all concerned. Of course, this action is in no way meant to stifle any debate within the organisation,'' Mr Connors wrote.
Legal aid lawyer Neal Funnell, one of the members who received the HolmanWebb letter, was also one of the defendants sued by the Gunns timber company in its long-running court case against the Wilderness Society and other protesters in Tasmanian forests.
''That litigation finished in November last year and now two months later I am getting letters from lawyers from the Wilderness Society basically trying to intimidate me,'' Mr Funnell said.
''This kind of intimidation is the very issue the Wilderness Society has been campaigning against in the Gunns case. I can't go past the irony of that,'' he said.
''Whoever's harebrained idea it was to engage a legal firm to write to members with a view to intimidating and suppressing their dissent would be best suited on the board of Gunns, rather than inside a conservation organisation.''
Ms Alexander, who joined the Wilderness Society in 1979 and was one of the people who brought the organisation to Melbourne from Tasmania, said November's secretive AGM was ''appalling''.
''It is totally unacceptable. Whether it is legal or not, it is totally unethical and outside the spirit of any organisation that is essentially community-based,'' Ms Alexander said.
''The organisation's whole legitimacy comes from support from the community. What an insult to those people who support the Wilderness Society.''
Board convener Lyn Goldsworthy and Mr Marr's appointed board spokeswoman Lena Aahlby did not return The Sunday Age's calls.
Both sides of the dispute have set up websites to rally support among members.
The special general meeting of the Wilderness Society will be held on Saturday, February 13, at 11am at the Fitzroy Town Hall.
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