Starbright Media Corporation, a Washington, D.C., and Michigan-based documentary film company, has begun development of a television special on Australia's Daintree Rainforest and its uncertain future.
The Special is to be a 90-minute High Definition production and is planned for release in the United States on public television, according to George Colburn, Executive Producer of SMC. After its television premiere in the United States, it will edited into three 30-minute programs for classroom use. International distribution of the Special in 2005 is also planned by SMC.
The Wet Tropics Region, in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland, holds this last remaining Australian rainforest and is world famous for being “where the rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef.” Both the Wet Tropics Region and the Great Barrier Reef have been designated “World Heritage Area” status.
The trees of the lowlands of the Daintree Rainforest protect the Great Barrier Reef by binding the soil and holding back erosion that endanger the coral infrastructure of the Reef. The lowlands form a bridge of forested land, creating a continuous sweep of rainforest from the peaks of the coastal mountain range down to the mangroves of the Coral Sea shoreline.
But experts have warned that by 2008, as a result of piecemeal forest clearing and home building on private land in the Daintree lowlands, the environmental damage to the rainforest and the Reef will be irreversible.
The Special will evaluate the environmental impact of the continuing land-clearing and deforestation and document the efforts being made to save the Rainforest from further human degradation, Colburn said. More than 14,000 acres of the Daintree Rainforest – arguably the oldest rainforest on earth – remain unprotected, putting at risk the forest’s plant and animal species, the Great Barrier Reef, the coastal stream fisheries, and even the Aboriginal Kuku Yalanji, an ancient rainforest people.
The production will be under the overall direction of Sandy Ostertag, an award-winning producer of nature television programs whose work has been regularly seen on public television. Ms. Ostertag, who is based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, will bring together a team of television professionals with outstanding credentials in the natural history genre of program-making, Colburn said.
For more information, contact Starbright Media:
Dr.
George Colburn
Post Office Box 309, Walloon Lake, MI 49796
517/332-6265 or 202/258-4887
StarbrightMC@cs.com
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