SOUTH AUSTRALIA

• VS1 is a 30MW / 288 MWh CSP plant to be located in Port Augusta, South Australia.
• Utilising Vast’s proprietary modular tower CSP v3.0 technology, VS1 will generate clean, low-cost, dispatchable power with over 8 hours of thermal energy storage.
• The project is anticipated to create dozens of green manufacturing jobs, hundreds of jobs during construction and long-term plant operations roles.
• Craig Wood, CEO of Vast said, "This is a major step forward for Vast and VS1, putting this historic CSP project on the path to construction.

• Australian biotech company Ferronova has announced the initiation of a clinical trial of the company’s FerroTrace® nanoparticle technology in patients with gastric and oesophageal cancers.
• It follows the completion of a first-in-human trial in 2020-2022 in oral cancer patients.
• Trial imaging is supported by the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and the National Imaging Facility.
• They have all put in an incredible amount of work and planning to design and initiate this trial.

• The pattern of fire most commonly experienced within an ecosystem is known as the fire regime.
• We wanted to find out how Australian fire regimes are changing and what this means for biodiversity.
• Read more:
  Research reveals fire is pushing 88% of Australia's threatened land mammals closer to extinction

Uncovering long-term changes

• However, evidence of how fire regimes are shifting within both threatened species’ ranges and protected areas is scarce, particularly at the national scale and over long periods.
• To address this gap, we compiled maps of bushfires and prescribed burns in southern Australia from 1980 to 2021.

More fire putting wildlife at risk

• Meanwhile, areas of recently burnt vegetation (5 years or less since the most recent fire) are growing.
• On average, the percentage of long unburnt vegetation within reserves declined from 61% to 36% over the four decades we studied.
• Going from about 42,000 sq km to about 64,000 sq km in total, which is an increase of 22,000 square kilometres.

Which areas have seen the biggest changes?

• This pattern was most prominent in southeastern Australia, including the Kosciuszko and Alpine national parks.
• Feral horses are finishing the job

  In these locations, dry years with low rainfall can make abundant vegetation more flammable.

• These conditions contribute to high fire risk across very large areas, as observed in the 2019–20 fire season.

What does this mean for Australia’s wildlife?

• Indigenous land management, including cultural burning, is one approach that holds promise in reducing the incidence of large fires while providing fire for those species that need it.
• We can also help wildlife become more resilient to shifting fire regimes by reducing other pressures such as invasive predators.
• Our findings underscore the increased need for management strategies that conserve threatened species in an increasingly fiery future.

• William Geary is affiliated with the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action.
• Dale Nimmo receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Attractions, and the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action.

• “It could be the death of the museum,” says renowned mammalogist Tim Flannery, a former director of the museum.
• “To say research isn’t important to what a museum does – it’s sending shock waves across the world,” she says.

What’s the plan?

• According to the museum’s website, this skeleton crew will focus on “converting new discoveries and research into the visitor experience”.
• Others have tackled global questions such as the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, how eyes evolved in Cambrian fossils, and Antarctic biodiversity.

What’s so special about a museum?

• Their remits are different, says University of Adelaide botanist Andy Lowe, who was the museum’s acting director in 2013 and 2014.
• Unlike universities, he says, the museum was “established by government, to carry out science for the development of the state”.

• “They’re crucial for what goes on above; you need experts not second-hand translators,” says University of Adelaide geologist Alan Collins.
• He wonders what will happen the next time a youngster comes into the museum asking to identify a rock.
• The museum’s Phillip Jones now uses this collection in his research, delivering more than 30 exhibitions, books and academic papers.

Continuity and community

• Without attentive curation and the life blood of research, the collections are doomed to “wither and die”, says Flannery.
• That raises the issue of continuity.
• In Flannery’s words, the job of a museum curator:
  is like being a high priest in a temple.

• Over Jones’ four decades at the museum, his relationships with Indigenous elders have also been critical to returning sacred objects to their traditional owners.
• Besides the priestly “chain of care”, there’s something else at risk in the museum netherworld: a uniquely productive ecosystem feeding on the collections.
• Here you’ll find PhD students mingling with retired academics; curators mingling with scientists; museum folk with university folk.
• In the year ending 2023 for instance, joint museum and university grants amounted to A$3.7 million.

DNA and biodiversity

• The museum has also declared it will no longer support a DNA sequencing lab it funds jointly with the University of Adelaide.
• “No other institute in South Australia does this type of biodiversity research,” says Andrew Austin, chair of Taxonomy Australia and emeritus professor at the University of Adelaide.
• “It’s the job of the museum.” The cuts come while the SA government plans new laws to protect biodiversity.

Elizabeth Finkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.