Memorial Page for Steve Irwin (née Stephen Robert Irwin)

Steve Irwin (born 22 February 1962 in Upper Ferntree Gully, Victoria; died 4 September 2006 at the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland) was an Australian zoo director, conservationist and television presenter. As the "Crocodile Hunter" he and his wife Terri turned a small family wildlife park on the Sunshine Coast into a household name around the world – and he used that fame almost entirely to protect wildlife and the places it lives. He never hunted crocodiles; he caught them, relocated them and defended them. Twenty years after his death, Terri, Bindi and Robert Irwin carry on Australia Zoo, its wildlife hospital and the conservation charity Wildlife Warriors in his spirit.

A childhood among snakes and crocodiles

Steve Irwin was born to Lyn and Bob Irwin in a suburb of Melbourne. His mother was a maternity nurse who nursed injured wildlife back to health; his father was a plumber who collected reptiles out of sheer passion. In 1970 the family moved to Queensland's Sunshine Coast and opened a small reptile park in Beerwah – two acres of land with goannas, tiger snakes, freshwater crocodiles and kangaroos that would one day become Australia Zoo.

The boy quite literally grew up among the enclosures. He was given a python for his sixth birthday, and at nine he wrestled his first crocodile under his father's supervision. As a teenager and young man he volunteered for the Queensland government's crocodile management programme and caught more than a hundred animals that had to be removed from populated areas. Many were relocated; some found a new home in the family park. What others saw as a danger, he saw from the very beginning as a living creature that deserved protection.

Australia Zoo and Terri

On 4 October 1991 Steve Irwin took over the management of his parents' park. Two days later an American tourist walked through the gates: Terri Raines from Eugene, Oregon, who was visiting wildlife rehabilitation facilities in Australia. Both later described the meeting as love at first sight. They married on 4 June 1992 in Terri's home town. Instead of a honeymoon, the two went crocodile trapping – and had it filmed. In 1998 the park received the name it carries today: Australia Zoo.

The Crocodile Hunter

The honeymoon footage became the television series The Crocodile Hunter in 1996. Steve Irwin did not talk about animals, he talked to them – excited, right up close, eyes wide open, with his trademark cry of "Crikey!". The series aired in more than 100 countries and made him one of the best-known Australians in the world; Croc Files, The Crocodile Hunter Diaries and numerous specials followed. In 2002 he starred in his only feature film, The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, released in the United States on 12 July 2002.

In the German-speaking world, too, he became a fixture on television: Crocodile Hunter premiered on German television on 4 October 1999 and was later shown by RTL II. To this day the family series Die Irwins airs on Animal Planet Germany – with the same enclosures, the same khaki shirts and the same enthusiasm.

The protector

Steve Irwin did not see himself as a television star but as a "wildlife warrior". He put his mission simply: to save the world's endangered species – not by preaching, but by sharing his excitement. On television he said that every single cent the series earned went into conservation. The Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation became the independent charity Wildlife Warriors; he also helped found International Crocodile Rescue and a memorial fund for his mother Lyn, who had died in a car accident on 11 February 2000. With the proceeds from television and the zoo he bought large tracts of land in Australia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the United States to leave them permanently to nature.

In Lyn Irwin's memory, Steve and Terri converted an old avocado packing shed into a wildlife hospital in 2004. That makeshift clinic has grown into one of the largest wildlife hospitals in the world: the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital now admits between 9,000 and 10,000 injured animals every year – more than 136,000 since 2004.

The researcher

Science carries his name forward as well. In the early 1990s, Steve and his father Bob caught a turtle on the Burdekin River during a crocodile-catching trip that belonged to no known species; in 1997 the herpetologist John Cann described it as a new species and named it after its discoverer: Elseya irwini, Irwin's turtle.

The crocodile catcher became a research partner. In 2004 he launched the "Crocs in Space" project together with zoologist Craig Franklin of the University of Queensland – the first published study to track wild crocodiles by satellite. The animals were caught with the techniques Irwin himself had developed, fitted with transmitters and released again. The results were published on 26 September 2007, a year after his death, in the journal PLOS ONE – with Steve Irwin as co-author. The project has grown into the largest crocodile research programme in the world, on the Wenlock River in the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve: by the end of 2024, 296 crocodiles were being tracked there, and every August the family joins the Australia Zoo team for a month-long research trip to Cape York.

Farewell

On 4 September 2006 Steve Irwin was filming underwater footage for the documentary Ocean's Deadliest at Batt Reef off Port Douglas. A stingray struck him in the chest with its barb; he died at the scene. The news was met with grief around the world. On 9 September he was buried in a private ceremony on the grounds of Australia Zoo. On 30 September 2006, 5,500 people gathered in the zoo's Crocoseum for a public memorial service that was broadcast live worldwide – his daughter Bindi, then eight years old, spoke about her father herself.

In those days a sea of flowers, notes and khaki shirts grew outside the zoo's entrance. Three weeks after his death the Queensland government gave the road in front of the zoo a new name: Steve Irwin Way.

Legacy

In 2007 Australia dedicated a reserve to him: the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve on Cape York Peninsula, some 130,000 hectares of untouched land spanning 35 different ecosystems. Through Wildlife Warriors the family now protects more than 180,000 hectares across Queensland. Every year on 15 November Australia Zoo celebrates Steve Irwin Day – the birthday of one of his favourite animals, a Galápagos giant tortoise; staff wear khaki that day and visitors raise money for Wildlife Warriors. On 15 November 2008 the new wildlife hospital building was opened on that very day.

The honours range from the Australian government's Centenary Medal (2001) to a posthumous adjunct professorship at the University of Queensland (14 November 2007), induction into the Logie Hall of Fame (2007) and the Queensland Greats award (2015). On 26 April 2018 his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled, and on his 57th birthday in 2019 Google dedicated a Doodle to him. The marine conservation group Sea Shepherd named its flagship after him; Terri Irwin said that if Steve were alive, he would be aboard with them.

In Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast stands his memorial in white stone: Steve kneeling, Bindi and Robert at his side, a crocodile in their arms. He himself had often said that if he was to be known for anything, he hoped it would be for having been a good father.

The family carries on his work

Terri Irwin has run Australia Zoo since 2006, together with the two children who both grew up in khaki. Bindi Irwin presented her own wildlife shows as a child and on 24 November 2015 became the first Australian to win the US dance competition Dancing with the Stars. Robert Irwin, born in 2003, is in front of the camera himself today – and on 25 November 2025 won the same show, ten years after his sister. From 2018 to 2022 the series Crikey! It's the Irwins followed the family at the zoo; on German-language television it still airs as Die Irwins.

The Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki summed it up after Steve Irwin's death: people will not protect what they fear or do not understand – and those were exactly the animals Steve Irwin helped them understand. He taught millions to look at crocodiles, snakes and spiders with different eyes. That is more than a television career. It is a legacy that lives on every day in Beerwah.