In this article:
Campaign: Save the Florida black bear

With his animal instinct for the nearly extinct, "Croc Hunter" Steve Irwin is winning over millions as TV's ultimate game boy and zoo guru.

By Sandra Lee

ike some crazed cross between Tarzan and a frat pledge, Steve Irwin flings himself on top of a thrashing crocodile. Slick with mud and blood (his), Irwin wrestles the beast into restraints, then declares to the TV camera, "She's a beauty!"

But here's the real beauty: With his down-and-dirty documentaries, this hyper Aussie has gotten a whole new generation excited about wildlife preservation. And in the process, he has become a cult hero.

What says Irwin to that? "Crikey!"

The outback slang, the bush-trekker khakis, the suicidal tangos with some of nature's fiercest creatures -- these are the trademarks of both the man and the show known as The Crocodile Hunter. Seen in more than 60 million U.S. homes and more than 122 countries worldwide, Croc Hunter, as it is affectionately known among its fans, is a breakout success for cable's Animal Planet, a spinoff of the Discovery Channel. This week, Animal Planet's special "Croc Week" will showcase Irwin, 38, at his rowdiest -- dodging spitting cobras in Indonesia, rescuing endangered crocodiles in East Timor.

Irwin's brand of full-contact conservation has its detractors. He's been called a rash grandstander, a dangerous model for kids, unprofessional, downright nuts. But even some of Irwin's critics concede that since its 1996 American debut, Croc Hunter has done what staid, arms-length wildlife shows have not: intrigued and inspired today's 20- and 30-somethings, in whose hands rests the future of endangered species. Some fans tune in, they'll admit, just to see which beast bloodies Irwin next. But most are drawn to his unabashed passion for the animals, his brute enthusiasm when hunting them, and his tender devotion to protecting them.

"Our motto, our absolute, what we live and die by, is conservation through exciting education," Irwin says. He is sitting in the dining room of his boyhood home in the Australian state of Queensland, where a battered boot hangs, trophy-like, from a rafter overhead. Irwin nearly lost the boot -- and his leg -- when a raging, flesh-eating Komodo dragon treed him in Indonesia.

In his high-drama quest, Irwin says he's been "peed on, pooed on, stomped on, bitten, chomped, sliced, chased, harassed -- by animals, mate." He also has been parodied on Saturday Night Live, interviewed on The Tonight Show, hired as a TV commercial pitchman, made into a plastic action figure (due in stores this fall), and ranked in Forbes magazine's Celebrity 100.

"Crikey" hardly covers it.

Young Steve was only one of the wild things Bob and Lyn Irwin raised at the reptile and wildlife park they founded in Beerwah, Australia, 43 miles north of Brisbane. The boy, whose dad cheerfully recalls him as "a monster," got a 12-foot python for his 6th birthday. At 9, he trapped his first crocodile. Irwin credits his parents with instilling his passion for wildlife; he calls Bob "my hero" and weeps when speaking of Lyn, killed last February in a car crash.

A one-time diesel mechanic, Irwin holds no academic degrees in animal studies. But by 1991, when he took over management of the family's Australia Zoo, he had become a self-taught reptile expert and a daredevil showman who wowed zoo crowds.

One day, as Irwin ran a crocodile demonstration with a behemoth named Aggro, he spotted a dark-haired tourist in the audience: Terri Raines, who ran a rehab program for predatory mammals in her native Oregon. As Irwin has told and retold it, "Our eyes met, and that was it. ... Next thing, I looked down and here is Aggro trying to kill me."

Steve and Terri married within months and honeymooned by catching a rogue crocodile. Irwin's "best mate," TV producer John Stainton, filmed that adventure and turned it into the first Crocodile Hunter documentary. A huge hit on Australian TV, the show was exported to the USA four years ago and now averages 1 million to 1.5 million viewers a week -- 25% of whom are men ages 18 to 24 -- for two airings (Wednesdays and Sundays, 9 p.m. ET/PT). The couple shares star billing; Terri Irwin serves as good-natured sidekick and damsel in distress. There are even cameos by the Irwins' daughter, Bindi (named for one of Dad's favorite crocs), who'll be 2 this summer.

When Irwin coos "Hello, sweetheart" to a 330-pound python coiled neatly around his neck, he's continuing "a long tradition, the Joan Embrey, Jack Hanna kind of thing, but he has brought an almost insane amount of energy to the whole idea of the animal handler," says TV Guide senior critic Matt Roush. "He doesn't just handle animals. He is handled by animals, and somehow escapes with his skin.

"He's fearless, but not in a macho way, almost in a wide-eyed way, in wonderment at what he does. You think of the old Marlon Perkins days [on TV's Wild Kingdom], and there was a sense of stateliness and sort of humorlessness about it: 'We are visiting Nature here.' This guy just gets down and dirty with it; he dives in headfirst and you never know what he's going to come up with -- sometimes between his teeth."

Irwin's style plays perfectly to a younger generation that wants its true-life TV to be as breakneck and kinetic as its video games. Gen-Xers lionize Irwin online: A Croc Hunter Web site (www.jeffmajor.com/croc) run by a fan gets as many as 5,500 visitors a month. And some collegians play a tavern game during broadcasts, in which viewers quaff their drinks every time Irwin shouts "Crikey!" or "Isn't she a beauty?!"

Reptile expert Jeff Lemm, of the renowned San Diego Zoo, calls Irwin's antics the single most important reason young Americans are becoming interested in wildlife conservation. "When you have that many viewers and you are putting your message out like he is, in a very different way, it's going to have an impact," Lemm says.

And it's going to draw some fire.

Kent Vliet isn't squeamish about wildlife close encounters: That's him swimming among alligators in several National Geographic films. Vliet, a University of Florida reptile expert, is impressed with the Australia Zoo's conservation work and grateful for the attention Irwin generates. But he can't reconcile that with, for example, "the haphazard way in which he handles snakes and gets bitten," a stunt Vliet fears viewers might try to emulate, with tragic results.

Vliet calls Irwin "the definition of a double-edged sword. He has created this persona to get himself a show, and then he can deliver his conservation message. If you really look at his shows, the message is there, but it's so hidden among all of this junk he does. Given his enormous popularity now, he could easily tone down the persona and turn up the message. And he really hasn't done that."

Isn't she a beauty? Irwin and his American wife and sidekick, Terri, named daughter Bindi after a favorite croc.

The Irwins shrug off critics. Terri says every show includes a "don't-try-this-at-home" disclaimer. And Steve says he can pull off the risky maneuvers because "I am instinct, 1,000% instinct."

He admits "no one in their right mind should, or ever would, go up on their belly, right there, smack into a hippo carcass and film crocs" feeding on it, as he does in a Croc Week episode airing next Friday. But, he says, "I knew I was in no danger. I've been doing this my whole life; I was born into this. I choose to get in close so people can care about the animals."

Take the saltwater crocodile, the dinosaur-once-removed that has made Irwin a household name. Only about 60,000 exist in all of Australia; in Queensland, preservationists say, there's a 1-in-10 chance the species could vanish within 100 years. The crocodile is just one of thousands of species listed as endangered, and every day for the next 40 years, on average, 100 to 200 animal and plant species will become extinct, the World Wildlife Fund estimates.

The more people support wildlife conservation -- refusing to buy products made from exotic animals, working to protect the creatures and their habitats -- the greater the chance these species will survive. Says Terri Irwin: "No matter how many shows or how much work we do, we are not going to make a difference. It's only the masses that will make a difference."

To honor his late mother and continue her work, Irwin has established the Lyn Irwin Memorial Fund. Fans' contributions will help the Australia Zoo rehabilitate endangered animals, including a male and female wallaby recently returned to the wild.

But Irwin will let zoo colleagues tend to what he calls "cute and cuddly" species, while he goes his snake-dandling, tarantula-handling, croc-wrestling way. "I will continue to put my life on the line to save wildlife," he vows. "This is my passion, and it won't stop. My life or theirs."

TV critic Roush likens Irwin to "a carnival barker bringing us into a show, and the show is the endangered world. He's using his own entertainment value as a reckless daredevil to get us to appreciate unspoiled nature.

"He's putting on a show so we can understand the bigger picture."

Patricia Edmonds contributed to this story.

Go to top

DON'T LEAVE THIS POOR BEAR UP A TREE

JOIN USA WEEKEND'S CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE FLORIDA BLACK BEAR

Crocodiles aren't the only creatures feeling the brunt of man's encroachment on Mother Nature. In this country alone, 367 animals are listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered; 128 are classified as threatened.

One animal, though, is absent so far from such lists, and therefore not eligible for funding and protection: the Florida black bear. Conservationists believe only 1,500 to 2,000 exist today, compared with a population that once numbered 12,000. The culprits: widespread development and roadkill.

"We need to act now, or some decades from now the bear will be reduced to a zoo animal," says Laurie Macdonald, of the Defenders of Wildlife's Habitat for Bears Campaign.

To heighten awareness of this shy animal, USA WEEKEND magazine invites readers to join the campaign to help the Florida black bear.

Ways you can help:

• Discover more about the black bear here.
• Volunteer. Call the Defenders of Wildlife, 202-682-9400.
• Donate. Send a check designated for black bear management to: Wildlife Foundation of Florida, P.O. Box 11010, Tallahassee, Fla. 32302.
• Learn to co-exist. If you live in or visit Florida, drive slowly through bear crossing areas and lock up all food, trash, grills and bird feeders.

Photographs by Donald W. Elliott