DICAPRIO'S THE BEACH: TROUBLE IN PARADISE.

When Leonardo DiCaprio agreed to star in The Beach as a follow-up to the blockbuster Titanic, he probably thought he'd get a nice rest on location in an unspoiled Thai paradise.

The Beach, based on a novel by the young British writer Alex Garland, is about an idyllic island where things go horribly wrong. Unfortunately, in this case, life appears to have imitated art. Things went horribly wrong for the film, scheduled for release in December, when local environmentalists noticed the crew tearing up the protected national park on Phi Phi Leh Island with bulldozers. The idea was to make the scenery look more classically "tropical" and to widen the beach for a football scene. The work included planting 100 non-native coconut palms and removing much of the natural vegetation, including giant milkweed, sea pandanus, spider lily and other beach grass whose roots, say Thai environmentalists, hold the sand formations on treasured Maya Beach in place.

The filmmakers paid the Thailand Forestry Department $100,000 to shoot scenes on the protected island, which angered local protesters like Ing Kanjanavanit, who denounced what she called "over-the-table bribery." She added, "Our laws should not be for sale." Activists temporarily blockaded the beach and filed a court brief, but the filming went ahead earlier this year.

Bryony Schwam, director of the Montana-based Women's Voices for the Earth, (WVE) encountered the environmental protest on a recent vacation in Thailand, and was inundated with response after she posted details and photos on WVE's web site (http://www.wildrockies.org/wve/beach.htm). "People everywhere in Thailand were talking about it," Schwam says. "They were asking, `Suppose we came over to the U.S. and bulldozed Yellowstone Park to make a movie?' They tried to meet with the studio [20th Century Fox], but nothing happened." WVE then circulated a petition via e-mail calling for a filmgoer boycott.

Tim Keating, executive director of New York-based Rainforest Relief, describes the environmental insensitivity as "very typical of Hollywood. They talk about how green they are, then use endangered tropical luan wood to make sets, and threaten the Ballona wetlands near Los Angeles to build the Dreamworks offices."

For his part, a shellshocked DiCaprio told the Los Angeles Times that the protests were "a big waste of time ... There are a million important environmental issues going on throughout the world right now." Twentieth Century Fox spokeswoman Carol Sewell declined to comment, but sent an "environmental fact sheet" claiming that the beach would be fully restored to its original state, and citing approval for the remediation work from the Thai Forestry Department, the same government body that was paid $100,000. The sheet added that crew members had picked up two tons of "inorganic rubbish" from the beach, mostly plastic carried in by tides. "That doesn't justify what they did," Schwam says. CONTACT: 20th Century Fox, 10201 West Pico Boulevard, Building 89, Room 224, Los Angeles, CA 90035/[phone]; Women's Voices for the Earth, 114 West Pine Street, Missoula, MT 59802/(406)543-37471.