Like coral reefs across the globe the forests, woodlands and coastal heath of southwestern Australia are undergoing a “bleaching” due to rapidly changing climatic conditions. Scientists had warned that this was a possibility after observing a similar event in 2011 in Western Australia’s northern jarrah forest.
In 2024 scientists started witnessing another collapse, but this time it was far more widespread, and sections of these unique and ancient forests may never recover.
So far, the brown off stretches more than 1000km and has destroyed an estimated 150,000 hectares of vegetation in WA alone.
Similar browning has been reported in other parts of the nation including in Tasmania where ancient King Billy pines have died off.
Meanwhile marine heatwaves have impacted heavily on coastal waters killing more than 100,000 hectares of kelp forest near Kalbarri in the Western Australian Mid West and causing severe coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland and the Ningaloo reef off the west coast.
The same coral bleaching marine heatwave has seen the growth of toxic algal blooms blight the South Australian coastline resulting in thousands of dead marine creatures washing ashore on the beaches of Adelaide and devastating the commercial fishing industry.
Concurrently debate over climate action continues to rage in the halls of federal parliament and our governments continue to approve massive new fossil fuel projects.
Browned Off will investigate the extent of these growing ecological disasters and what we can all do to turn this situation around.
Will we act in time to reverse this current downward spiral?
This is the final in a trilogy of feature films that tell the story of Australia’s ecosystems in crisis. It follows Cry of the Forests (2020), which looked at the issue of logging and mining in Western Australia’s native forests and Black Cockatoo Crisis (2022), which told the story of our unfolding biodiversity crisis through the plight of endangered and threatened black cockatoos.
Jane Hammond is a life-long environmental activist, an independent documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist. She specializes in stories of environmental justice, action on climate change and social affairs.
Jane has made four long form documentary films. Her most recent, Black Cockatoo Crisis, released in 2022, was recognised as a change maker during its production with the 2021 Brian Beaton Award for Social Impact. Black Cockatoo Crisis went on to win the Change Award for Social Impact at the 2023 Adelaide Film Festival and is currently streaming on SBS On Demand. Jane’s documentary Cry of the Forests – A Western Australian Story, released in November 2020, was instrumental is raising awareness and changing public opinion on logging in WA. After a strong social impact campaign around the film the WA Government announced in 2021 that all native forest logging in the state would end by 2024.
