General News
In March this year Tim was after dinner speaker at the Bruny Island Bird Festival, talking, among other things, about the prominent role played by Tasmanian birds in his bird book. He also led a Gondwanan plant walk in the Inala Jurassic Garden.
He has been interviewed several times this year about invasive species, though a more important interview was in August last year when Tim was interviewed by Sally Sara on ABC Radio National Breakfast about his ‘groundbreaking’ book Feral Future and its influence on Australia’s understanding of invasive species. The topics discussed included Australia’s extinction record and the role of African grasses in worsening Australian bushfires. The interview can be heard here.
He was interviewed by Kirsty Costa for her Weekend Birder Podcast, talking about parrots. This follows from an earlier podcast he did about Where Song Began. An interview about honeyeaters is planned for December.
In July 2025 he was a tour guide on an Australian Geographic travel tour of Christmas Island and the Cocos-Keeling Islands. The giant robber crabs were spectacular, as shown in footage Tim captured on his phone. A visit was made to the two Cocos isles on which endangered blue-tailed skinks (Cryptoblepharus egeriae) have been established following their extinction on Christmas Island from Asian wolf snakes.
In June he appeared at an Australian Museum event discussing the work of John and Elizabeth Gould, celebrated in the Museum’s Birds of Australia storybox.
Early that year, following travel in Poland, he co-authored a journal article with Polish biologists reporting a new weed for Europe, Bisset bamboo (Phyllostachys bissetii).
In June 2024 Tim was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to conservation, and to environmental education and awareness (see box below).
In 2024 he featured in a Gardening Australia episode about Brisbane’s changing bird fauna. He mentioned the sparrows of his childhood becoming rare birds in Brisbane today. Native birds with a greatly increased presence in the city include noisy miners, currawongs, white ibis and brush turkeys. Aggressive native birds have become today’s winners, a theme in his book The New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia.
Tim’s report GONE: Australian animals extinct since 1960, co-authored with Carol Booth, was revised and rereleased in 2024 by the Invasive Species Council. Tim was interviewed about this on ABC TV News.
He and Carol were also interviewed about the report on ABC Radio, and that interview was written up as an article for the ABC website. The report was also mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald and reported on by Yahoo News and Open Forum. It considers every animal extinction since 1960, finding that most were caused by invasive species, notably chytrid fungus (6 frogs), wolf snakes (3 lizards and a bat), cats and foxes.
He appeared in the ABC TV special Surviving Extinction, talking about extinction and the plight of the endangered regent honeyeater. The episode is available on YouTube
He was interviewed at length by Shoba Narayan for her Bird Podcast based in India.
Tim is spending most of his time writing.

In June 2024 Tim was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to conservation, and to environmental education and awareness. The award notes emphasised Tim’s role in increasing public awareness of invasive species problems, by writing the book Feral Future, then helping found the Invasive Species Council, the main organisation in Australia advocating for better policies in this area, with which Tim remains closely involved. Tim’s other books were mentioned, and his articles and international public speaking, and also the lizard named after him. The Governor-General and ISC each have a webpage about Tim receiving the award.
Book News

Tim’s book The New Nature has been published in China in translation by SDX Joint Publishing Co. in Beijing. This came about after Tim visited northern China in 2019 as a guest of the China Writer’s Association and Jilin Provincial Writer’s Association. A page about the translated book can be found here. The title in Chinese translates as ‘A New Interpretation of Nature’.

Tim Low with then Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews after winning People’s Choice at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (Photo Matt Deller).