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[h=4]'Mad Max: Fury Road' causes rage in world's oldest desert[/h]JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The Namibian desert, with its stark, lunar landscape, makes an ideal dramatic<span style="color: Red;">*</span>backdrop for a post-apocalyptic movie.
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The Namib Desert was the grand backdrop to the high-speed car chases in ten-time Oscar-nominated Mad Max : Fury Road. At the time of filming, ecologists were fuming, accusing the production of destroying the dunes. Newslook
Craggy rocks and barren mountain outcrops form a lunar landscape in the Namib Desert, the oldest desert in the world. Because of its post-apocalyptic setting, the film 'Mad Max: Fury Road' was shot here.(Photo: Veronica Gould Stoddart, USA TODAY)
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The Namibian desert, with its stark, lunar landscape, makes an ideal dramatic<span style="color: Red;">*</span>backdrop for a post-apocalyptic movie.
Max Max: Fury Road,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>which on Sunday won six Oscars, was filmed in this<span style="color: Red;">*</span>desert's dusty dunes. The production relocated<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to Namibia from Australia after unusually heavy rains Down Under turned a normally<span style="color: Red;">*</span>dry landscape green.
But while parts of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Namibia<span style="color: Red;">*</span>have<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the look of a wasteland, this rugged exterior hosts a fragile ecosystem. Residents and environmentalists have complained<span style="color: Red;">*</span>that the film crew's work<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in the Namib Desert caused damage to sensitive areas, and potentially to the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>small reptiles and rare cacti that live there.
Much of the filming, which took place in 2012,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>was based in Dorob National Park near Swakopmund, a former German settlement and resort town on the southern Atlantic coast.
A tour guide who works in the area<span style="color: Red;">*</span>accused the Mad Max crew<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of filming in a sensitive area of the park's sand dune belt, local media reported at the time.
USA TODAY
Best picture: 'Revenant,' 'Max' lead Oscar charge
The crew was also accused of leaving tire tracks in previously<span style="color: Red;">*</span>untouched areas.
The Namib Desert — the world's oldest, estimated at between 50 to 80 million years old —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>stretches from northern South Africa to Angola.
The most arid parts of the desert receive less than<span style="color: Red;">*</span>half an inch of rain a year, making the plant and animal life dependent on fog that rolls in from the ocean. Tire tracks on the desert's gravel plains can take decades or more to disappear.
“What is worse is the film crew tried to remove the marks they left themselves by dragging nets over them, ripping plants out,” the guide, Tommy Collard,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>told AFP.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“One cannot rehabilitate the landscape of the Namib Desert.”
The draft of an independent environmental report,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>leaked in 2013,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>also<span style="color: Red;">*</span>claimed that sensitive areas had been damaged.
The report said that public and environmental consultation prior to the filming was insufficient. According to the researcher,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Joh Henschel, the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>film was granted permission before new environmental legislation took effect.
But the government-run Namibia Film Commission<span style="color: Red;">*</span>angrily<span style="color: Red;">*</span>denied<span style="color: Red;">*</span>any issues with the filming, placing<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a full-page ad in a local newspaper proclaiming that they gave Mad Max: Fury Road<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a "clean bill."
In any event, the Academy didn't take environmental impact into account doling out its awards.
This article originally appeared on<span style="color: Red;">*</span>GlobalPost.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Its content was created separately to USA TODAY.
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