Cynics Unlimited

Steve Irwin (1962-2006)

Some sad news concerning the untimely death of Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin …

Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition. He was 44.
Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when he was stung, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.
He collapsed at Batt Reef, near Low Isle and the resort town of Port Douglas, Queensland state police said in a statement. Port Douglas is about 1,260 miles north of Brisbane, the state capital.
A rescue helicopter rushed to the scene but Irwin had died, the statement said.

While not a faithful viewer of the Crocodile Hunter, I caught the occasional show and found his measured-yet-dangerous encounters with lethal snakes, spiders, crocodiles, etc to be highly entertaining. Occasionally someone watching the show would argue that the danger was staged just like most so-called “reality” TV shows, but I’ve yet to hear a good explanation of how one goes about choreographing the movements of a Black Mamba snake.

More important that the on-screen danger was Steve Irwin’s off-screen conservation work. Irwin is credited with building up what has become the Australia Zoo, a predominantly reptilian zoo that reportedly had at one time the world’s oldest living animal – a Galápagos tortoise named Harriet. He was also a vocal opponent of proposed wildlife hunts in Australia and lent his celebrity to media campaigns urging Australians to protect the nation’s flora and fauna.

A Sea Turtle Wounded by a Stringray Barb (credit: Topsail Turtle Project)

Steve Irwin’s death isn’t totally shocking. Like a volunteer soldier or police officer, he chose a high-risk career that could have killed him in 2 years or 2 minutes. The longer he spent on the field, the more likely the chance of a mishap. Some will call Irwin’s death senseless or deserved for taking such foolish risks with dangerous animals; in reality, the man who re-popularized the term “crikey” did more to raise environmental awareness than a whole stadium full of placard-waving protesters shouting down modernity could ever hope to achieve. Steve Irwin almost single-handedly rescued environmentalism from the fringe left and made it palatable for the population at large, and this rise in public interest can only help grassroots conservationists who are still working diligently to protect, say, the fragile coral reefs in South East Asia.

One final note – the media has behaved most unethically if there is any truth to the statement that Irwin’s wife, Terri Reines –said to be trekking in Cradle Mountain- was not notified of his death before the story broke internationally. Imagine Reines returns from Tasmania to first hear of her husband’s death on the local news … Some discretion could have been exercised.

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