'Crocodile Hunter' Stalked Danger

At times, Irwin's derring-do led to negative press, most famously in 2004 when he cradled his infant son while feeding a dead chicken to crocodiles inside a zoo pen. He claimed that the child was never in danger, and Irwin was never charged with any crime.

When not filming his specials, Irwin and his American-born wife oversaw the Australia Zoo, a popular wildlife park started by his parents. He used part of his fortune to buy land for animal conservation, which he saw as imperative because of his country's massive land-clearing operations. He also helped lead efforts to save such endangered species as the woma, a type of python, and the Northern hairy-nosed wombat.

"Our whole passion to be on this planet is to educate people about wildlife," he said in 1998. "I will die doing that. I have a gift."

Stephen Robert Irwin was born Feb. 22, 1962, in Essendon, Victoria, near Melbourne.

His father worked as a plumber and his mother was a maternity nurse, but they were both amateur naturalists, and in 1970 they moved the family to the Queensland community of Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast. They bought four acres to start their zoo, which opened to the public in 1973 as the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park.

Irwin spent much of his youth helping his parents nurse injured birds and raise kangaroos. At 4, he maintained a dread of parrots and almost lost his nose to his father's sulfur-crested cockatoo. Two years later, he was overjoyed when his parents bought him his very own 11-foot-long scrub python as a birthday gift.

One of his defining early childhood experiences was "jumping" a crocodile in the Australian outback, with his father's permission. The father-son team caught with their bare hands or bred nearly all the 150 crocodiles at their park.

After high school, Irwin joined the government's Crocodile Management Program, a plan to relocate the aquatic reptile when they came into conflict with people, and he distinguished himself nationally in the art of crocodile capture.

His work also took him to Australian rain forests, and he became accomplished in studying goannas, a type of lizard.

"Living like a possum, I'd occasionally come down out of the trees for a feed," he wrote in a memoir. "Fortunately God blessed me with orangutan arms. To study arboreal animals, you've got to become one: I could climb anything."

In the early 1990s, he took over his parents' park and headed a cougar conservation effort. He also filmed a 10-hour television documentary about his work called "The Crocodile Hunter." But the producer, John Stainton, was so mesmerized by Irwin's own amateur videotapes that Stainton persuaded an Australian network to devote an entire series to Irwin.

The show proved popular in limited syndication, and Animal Planet began airing the program in 1996. It became the channel's most popular offering, won a Daytime Emmy Award for best children's series and led to such spinoffs as "Croc Files."