Namibian environmental groups are furious with the makers of the new Mad Max film, claiming they they've seriously damaged the fragile ecosystem of the Namib Desert -- a region that is undergoing severe stresses as a resulte of climate change.

The Namib Desert is a vast swathe of land along the Atlantic coast, stretching from northern South Africa to southern Angola. Estimates put it at between 50 to 80 million years old, making it the oldest desert in the world, and its extremely low annual precipitation renders the plant and animal life there dependent on marine fogs for water. The infamous Skeleton Coast has claimed thousands of ships over hundreds of years. As harsh and unforgiving environment as there is, it was chosen by director George Miller as the perfect place to film his post-apocalyptic sequel.

Mad Max: Fury Road -- which, like the first three films in the franchise, depicts a post-apocalyptic future world where law and order have broken down after fossil fuel supplies began running out -- has been in development hell for a decade. A sequel set shortly after the events of 1985's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, it stars Tom Hardy in the lead role (with Mel Gibson now too old to reprise it) alongside Charlize Theron. However, the economic boost the film has brought to Namibia has done nothing to lessen the anger of the country's environmentalists and tourism officials, who claim the production crew wrecked the delicate desert landscape in July and December 2012.

The movie was being filmed in an area that was recently named as the  Dorob National Park. Parts of it are designated for tourism, while others are set aside for particular species of endangered animal and plant life. The extremely dry environment in the desert makes any changes in the ecosystem extremely perilous -- less than 10mm of rain falls on the Namib Desert every year, and it can take decades for small lichens and mosses to build up where condensation occurs during fog. It is alleged that the Mad Max film crew damaged areas which are meant to be protected from human activities, threatening lizards, geckos, chameleons and "the rare lithops cactus".

Jon Henschel, an ecological scientist hired by the Namibian Coast Conservation and Management (Nacoma) Project to study the damage the environment suffered from the film crew, found that parts of the desert until now untouched by vehicles had been driven over, leaving tracks -- in one area a "ploughing device" had been used. Even worse, to try and level the tracks as they left, the crew had dragged nets across the ground, ripping out small plants.

However, the Namibia Film Commission has reacted angrily to the claims, even taking out a full-page advert in a national newspaper to state they give the film and its crew "a clean bill". The ministry of environment's permanent secretary Simeon Negumbo also told AFP that "the experienced, dedicated team used tried and tested methods like vehicle and hand-dragged fishing nets, tyres, brooms, chains, ropes and leaf blowers, which worked perfectly in the area".

Coincidentally, climate change -- and its bizarre weather -- drove the film crew to Namibia in the first place. Fury Road was originally meant to be filmed in Australia (where the three other films were also filmed), but after a decade of severe droughts unexpectedly heavy rainfall has turned the landscape around the mining town of Broken Hill into one of blooming wildflowers. Miller was forced to move production to Namibia in search of a landscape dry enough for his film.

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