Western Australia’s eucalypt forests fade to brown as century-old giant jarrahs die in heat and drought

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Fontaine stood in the middle of one of Western Australia’s eucalypt forests on another hot and dry day that was stripped of the usually raucous backing-track of bird calls.

“I could hear this scratching-crunching noise coming from the trees,” says Fontaine, a forest ecologist at Perth’s Murdoch University.