Fire

• 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.

• Abstract
  We evaluate the effects of contagion and common exposure on banks? capital through
  a regression design inspired by the structural VAR literature and derived from the balance
  sheet identity.
• Contagion can occur through direct exposures, fire sales, and market-based
  sentiment, while common exposures result from portfolio overlaps.
• First, we document that contagion varies in time, with the highest levels
  around the Great Financial Crisis and lowest levels during the pandemic.
• Our new framework complements
  traditional stress-tests focused on single institutions by providing a holistic view of systemic risk.
• While existing literature presents various contagion narratives, empirical findings on
  distress propagation - a precursor to defaults - remain scarce.
• We decompose systemic risk into three elements: contagion, common exposures, and idiosyncratic risk, all derived from banks? balance sheet identities.
• The contagion factor encompasses both sentiment- and contractual-based elements, common exposures consider systemic
  aspects, while idiosyncratic risk encapsulates unique bank-specific risk sources.
• Our empirical analysis of the Canadian banking system reveals the dynamic nature of contagion, with elevated levels observed during the Global Financial Crisis.
• In conclusion, our model offers a comprehensive lens for policy intervention analysis and
  scenario evaluations on contagion and systemic risk in banking.
• This
  notion of systemic risk implies two key components: first, systematic risks (e.g., risks related
  to common exposures) and second, contagion (i.e., an initially idiosyncratic problem becoming
  more widespread throughout the financial system) (see Caruana, 2010).
• In this paper, we decompose systemic risk into three components: contagion, common exposures, and idiosyncratic risk.
• First, we include contagion in three forms: sentiment-based contagion, contractual-based
  contagion, and price-mediated contagion.
• In this context,
  portfolio overlaps create common exposures, implying that bigger overlaps make systematic
  shocks more systemic.
• With the COVID-19 pandemic starting
  in 2020, contagion drops to all time lows, potentially related to strong fiscal and monetary
  supports.
• That is, our
  structural model provides a framework for analyzing the impact of policy interventions and
  scenarios on different levels of contagion and systemic risk in the banking system.
• This provides a complementary approach to
  seminal papers that took a structural approach to contagion, such as DebtRank Battiston et al.
• More generally, the literature on networks and systemic risk started with Allen and Gale
  (2001) and Eisenberg and Noe (2001).
• The matrix is structured as follows:
  1

  In our model, we do not distinguish between interbank liabilities and other types of liabilities.

• In other words, we can and aim to estimate different degrees
  of contagion per asset class, i.e., potentially distinct parameters ?Ga .
• For that, we build three major
  metrics to check: average contagion, average common exposure, and average idiosyncratic risk.
• N i j

  et ,
  Further, we define the (N ?K) common exposure matrix as Commt = [A

  (20)

  et ]diag (?C
  ?L

  such that average common exposure reads,
  average common exposure =

  1 XX
  Commik,t .

• N i j

  (22)

  20

  ? c ),

  The three metrics?average contagion, average common exposure, and average idiosyncratic risk?provide a comprehensive framework for understanding banking dynamics.

• Figure 4 depicts the average level of risks per systemic risk channel: contagion risk, common exposure, and idiosyncratic risk.
• Figure 4: Average levels of contagion (Equation (20)), common exposure (Equation (21)), and idiosyncratic risk
  (Equation (22)).
• The market-based contagion is the contagion due to
  investors? sentiment, and the network is an estimate FEVD on volatility data.
• For most of
  the sample, we find that contagion had a bigger impact on the variance than common exposures.

• Bruce Pascoe is best known for his natural history, Dark Emu, which argues that systems of pre-colonial food production and land management in Australia have been dramatically understated.
• At last count, the book had sold at least 360,000 copies of the original edition – and many more in the form of adaptations, translations, children’s and overseas editions.
• Since the publication of Dark Emu in 2014, Pascoe has had to endure extraordinary public scrutiny, as well as vehement attacks on his personal and professional reputation.

• In light of the last ten years, Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra is a healing and necessary book.
• The farm is a deliberate project designed to test, extend and materialise some of the ideas put forward in Dark Emu.
• The meaning of Yumburra, Pascoe tells us, is Black Duck, the “supreme spiritual being of Yuin country”.

Six seasons on the farm

• Through more than 60 subtitled journal entries, accompanied by numerous photographs and sketches, Pascoe charts the activities of his days.
• These include labouring chores on the farm, visits paid and received (both there and interstate), thoughts, visions and experiments with food and agriculture, and memories and reflections on relationships reaching far back into childhood.
• Pascoe describes life on the farm as solitary at times, but also active.
• Daily farm work includes clearing watercourses or fixing tools and machinery, and at these times his friendships with the nonhuman are forged in both subtle and overt ways.

• Despite their vigilance, the Spur-winged Plover loses a lot of chicks to eagles and foxes […] Their calls are ever-present on the farm.
• If the horses gallop, an eagle passes, a dingo wakes or a car arrives, you hear about it instantly.
• You can’t make friend with Birran Durran Durran because everything is a threat in its opinion.
• Despite their vigilance, the Spur-winged Plover loses a lot of chicks to eagles and foxes […] Their calls are ever-present on the farm.

• There is a sense of time moving on through the seasons.
• Yumburra, too, was affected by that event, leading one of the farm workers to rename a whole section of the farm “Apocalypse Valley” in the aftermath.
• “The unbridled pleasure I used to take in the forest, waters and shores is now tinged with sadness and dread.”

A true storyteller

• The author is respectfully light on detail on these matters, but the reader is left in no doubt about their deep importance to him.
• Pascoe’s authorial style sometimes comes across as a touch too lackadaisical and larrikin-esque, drifting as if unmoored.
• And yet, he’s a true storyteller – and no sooner have you hesitated, than he reels you in again, and has you marvelling with him at the grandchildren’s handstands and cartwheels on the paddle board on the river, or at the cunning of the dingo pair who’ve taken out a young Buru (kangaroo) by gripping him by the ears and drowning him.
• I assume it was the same animal because she made a great point of making sure I was watching her expertise.
• It might be a romantic thought or a wish for longevity of a friend but, whatever the case, I enjoy the personality.“

• Sometimes Pascoe quotes from her journal entries, discrete and beautifully rendered observations of wildlife on her own nearby property.
• But as I was reading, I found myself wondering how else Lyn contributed to the book, and on what terms.

Connection to culture and Country

• For anyone with lingering doubts about Pascoe’s commitment and connection to Country, this book will set them straight.
• It is a quiet, funny, warm and insistent call to return to and care for Country.

Julienne van Loon has been a recipient of funding from Creative Australia, Creative Victoria and ArtsWA.

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