Tim has written many magazine articles about various bush foods, including mulga gum, oozing here from a mulga tree (Acacia aneura) near Uluru.Selected Magazine Articles
Here are some articles published in magazines and online over the years.
For two years Tim Low wrote a blog for Australian Geographic magazine, and all those articles remain online. He wrote the cover story for the twentieth anniversary issue of the magazine, about Australia as a land of nectar.
Over a period of more than 30 years he has written many articles for Wildlife Australia magazine, and several of these are available below.
He was a leading contributor to the Australian Museum’s quarterly magazine Nature Australia (previously Australian Natural History). Running from 1985 to 2006, his column, Wild Things, was the longest in the magazine’s 85 year history. All articles were peer reviewed, with photos provided by Tim.
Here is a selection of articles from different sources:
Australia Needs Better Protection from Bio-invasion, in The Guardian.
Tree Disease Threatens Australian Forests, in The Saturday Paper.
He reviewed a book about dingoes for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Wildlife Australia
Corridors have become an inspiring concept in conservation today, but there is a risk of their benefits being oversold and problems denied. (2013, 50[4]: 4-8)
Australian species are causing some unusual conservation problems today. Examples include a native grass that is endangering rare snails, and a whelk that has transformed the Swan River estuary. (2016, 53[1]: 4-8)
To understand Australia better we should get to know this amazing island. (2014, 50[5]: 18-22)
Instead of using the word ‘primitive’ for species such as the platypus we should be talking more about ‘sisters’. (2013, 50[1]: 4-8)
“By where they live, freshwater fish pose mysteries that don’t apply to most animals”. (2013, 50[4]: 46-47)
Australian Geographic
Tim wrote more than 60 blogs for Australian Geographic, and only a few appear below. The others can be located here.
Some experts believe that eucalypts overlapped in time with dinosaurs.
Parrotfish: the coral-crunching sand-makers
By crunching coral into sand that washes up on beaches, parrotfish help islands rise.
The Plants that Saved the Numbat
Poisonous plants have helped save several marsupials from extinction by poisoning their enemies.
‘Emu, goanna, bandicoot’ and ‘cockatoo’ are not Aboriginal names. This blog attracted so much media interest that Tim was interviewed on radio nine times after it appeared.
Nature Australia
The past presence of cassowaries in subtropical Australia can be inferred from the existence of rare trees with large fruits suitable for dispersal only by these large birds. (1996, 25[4]: 16-17)
“Why are so few Australian trees deciduous?” (1998, 26[2]: 22-230)
The Amazing Voyages of Beach Beans
The seeds of seashore plants travel widely. Coconuts have reached Norway. When Tim was a guide on the Christmas Island Bird’n’Nature Week he showed guests Greta Beach, an unusual site at which beach seeds have been studied. (1996-7, 25[7]: 22-23)
In an article for Nature Australia, Tim considered whether Australia has an unusually nocturnal mammal fauna. Diurnal activity is often tied to cold weather, as these Tasmanian pademelons show.
