At featherlou’s suggestion, I’ve opened a thread to discuss whether or not he “had it coming” or however you want to put it.
For the record, I don’t think he did. The stingray was buried; he didn’t even know it was there until too late. Unfortunate but unavoidable, and no one’s fault.
Perhaps I should go for Uvula Gladwyne Total Forum Coverage and start an IMHO thread on whether his death can properly be described as ironic; a GQ thread about stingrays, a GD thread about whether footage from his last project should be released to the public…
Certainly his death wasn’t coming to him; just as certainly what happened to him was a real risk. He spent his life taking risks. Is there some reason we should be surprised, shocked, and/or amazed that the odds caught up with him?
The only way I will be able to make any kind of judgement as to negligent death or accidental death by misadventure is upon first viewing the tape. Any informed speculation must wait upon the hard facts. So far, the only information is a biased second hand account.
Quite honestly, I’m more annoyed that news of his death is pushing coverage of the death of Pittsburgh’s mayor aside around here. I know that’s not Irwin’s fault, and it’s irrational to feel that way, but I can’t help it.
I personally thought Irwin was extremely irresponsible and unprofessional. (And this is speaking as someone who works with other herpetologists and wildlife biologists who handle dangerous animals all the time.) I saw him do some amazingly stupid things, and be filmed doing them. I think he set a bad example and may have encouraged others to behave irresponsibly around potentially dangerous animals.
This said, this seems to have been a freak accident - I have not heard that he was messing around with the stingray. It’s rather as if Evel Knievel was killed by being hit by a bicyclist while crossing a street at a green light. It is supremely ironic that someone who took such unnecessary risks should be killed doing something that should have been so low risk.
Did he have this particular accident coming? No. Did he have serious injury or death from a wild animal coming? Probably yes.
I agree with Colibri completely. The vast, vast majority of stingray-related injuries are minor. There have only been 17 recorded cases of death-by-stingray ever. He might be the first person in history to get a barb to the heart for all we know, but blaming him for this is maybe not quite as bad as blaming someone for getting hit by a meteorite. And yes, incredibly ironic, given the risks he took routinely in his line of work. Of all the things that could kill him, that it would be something like this is just bizarre.
Johnny L. A.'s taken care of GQ for you. Irwin may have been a lot of things, but he’s certainly not deserving of having scorn heaped on him like whatever that ancient Senator (Crustbucket, or something) was who died around 2,000 years of age did. Finding out that his death was related to an animal is not all that surprising, since he did work with them and all, the manner of his passing is. The various chowderheads who are yukking it up at his passing should simply be ignored. Irwin’s life at least meant something, few people will be able to say the same about the chowderheads.
[QUOTE=Colibri]
I personally thought Irwin was extremely irresponsible and unprofessional. (And this is speaking as someone who works with other herpetologists and wildlife biologists who handle dangerous animals all the time.) I saw him do some amazingly stupid things, and be filmed doing them. I think he set a bad example and may have encouraged others to behave irresponsibly around potentially dangerous animals.
Colibri has expressed my thoughts exactly. There were times I just wanted to shake the man and say “Don’t you know there are kids and teenagers watching? Don’t you realize that they’re going to think this kind of thing is okay?!”
On the other hand, he did a hell of a lot to raise awareness about conservation. Because of Steve Irwin, a lot of kids will go on to work with animals or in related areas and just maybe there will still be creatures like the Saltwater Crocodile for our grandchildren to see alive and in their own habitat.
The sad thing, of course, is that now his children will grow up without him and Terri will have to continue alone.
I should say that do recognize that a lot of people enjoyed his show, and he made some very positive contributions to conservation. It’s just that, as a professional field biologist myself, his show made my eyes roll just about out of my head.
Meh, the kind of idiot who saw Irwin wrestle a croc on TV and thinks that he can do the same thing (only to promptly wind up as some croc or gator’s dinner) is the same kind of idiot who watches the “russian roulette” scene in The Deerhunter and decides to give it a go. IMHO, if Irwin inspired someone to go out and get a Darwin Award with his antics, then he’s done us a favor. Despite his hamming it up for the cameras, Irwin was a professional (conservationist and showman) and had years of training on how to deal with animals. His showmanship got eyeballs focused on the TV, made some of the drooling idiots out there aware of the world around him, and enabled him to buy up huge hunks of land to use as wildlife preserves. He’s also probably inspired a bunch of kids to study normally “boring” subjects like science. All those things are worth the lives of a few idiots, IMHO. YMMV, of course. BTW, I say this as someone who never watched his programs. I’m aware of him from commercials and his pop culture status (And when was it that we last had a wildlife guy who had the same level of pop culture status as him? Was it Marlin “I’ll stay safely in the helicopter while Jim wrestles the tiger to the ground” Perkins?).
I’m also familiar with Irwin only through his status as a pop-culture icon, since I’ve never watched his shows – only seen short scenes of them and he seemed slightly annoying --, but my opinion of him is quite similar to Tuckerfan’s. Yes, Colibri, I’m sure he did things that were dangerous. But from what I’ve read in the other thread about him, he had such an extremely personal and emotional relationship with animals, and nature in general, that he became a strong positive influence on many people. He has inspired people to not be afraid of nature, to love it, and he might have pushed people to get interested in biological sciences and in conservation.
I don’t exactly know what kind of work you do, Colibri, but I’m sure it’s very valuable on a scientific level, much more than anything Steve Irwin has done in his life. But Irwin served a different purpose. He had a love for animals that he worked hard to transmit to other people. And he had quite a lot of success at that. Not complete success, of course: I guess the people mocking him, that are alluded to in the other thread, are people with some kind of fear of nature who will always think him an idiot for going so close to ugly or dangerous animals. But if idiot he was, at least he was a useful idiot.
As for zoogirl’s comment, that he might have had a negative influence on children: I’m sure someone called zoogirl will recognize that helping children break a fear of animals that they might have is a good thing. Irwin was able to do this. Of course he was over the top: he was an entertainer, and anyway, his flamboyant personality is something that not everyone has. As for the risk of imitation, this is something that parents must assess, and they are the ones who must then take a decision.
All I can say is to the best of my knowledge stingrays, dispite the nasty name, are pretty benign creatures. Pleasent, even. And it would take a quite bit of of fucking with them for them to fuck you back. So I’m thinking he did in fact fuck with said animal before it fucked him back. I could be wrong.
Sorry, but this is melodramatic nonsense. Saltwater crocodiles were never going to be exterminated within the next 50 years. Steve Irwin can’t claim any part in ensuring there will still be saltwater crocodiles in 50 years. Steve Irwin never did claim any such feat.
This really is exactly like claiming that because of Al Gore maybe there will still be oxygen in the atmosphere in 50 years time. It’s nonsense. No such risk ever existed. The person named never implied any such risk existed. The person named never implied they averted any such risk.
Mr. Irwin did a lot for publicising the natural world, which is probably a good thing. He was also responsible for promoting a lot of ignorant and erroneous beliefs about the natural world, which was a bad thing. He reached a much larger audience and much younger than reputable TV zoologists like David Attenborough, but that also meant that he misinformed a lot of kids.
All told I have to conclude that any good Irwin may have done was exactly counterbalanced by the harm he did.
In particular his constant and ill-informed opposition to sustainable harvesting of wild animals has very likely led to the deaths of numerous animals and will continue to do so for generations.
Irwin wasn’t a hero, nor was he a villain. He was very successful showman whose life, IMO, was a scoreless draw.
I wasn’t really expecting requests for references in The Pit, but Irwin talked so much ignorant rubbish that finding references was easy. I simply had to put ““steve irwin” quotes” into Google and the very first site retrains such gems as:
“My field is with apex predators, hence your crocodiles, your snakes, your spiders.”
Neither spiders nor snakes are apex predators.
"Yeah, I think it’s an absolute disaster that Australia, the government, allowed kangaroo culling. "
This is a statement that no zoologist in the world would endorse. There may be debate over the extent of culling but every biologist agrees that some culling is required.
I’m not sure what you are requesting here? Do you want the name and serial number of an animal specifically killed as a result of Irwin’s misinformation? Of course I can’t provide that.
Do you want evidence that Irwin was a vocal opponent of any and all sustainable wildlife harvest? He has been said “I believe sustainable use is the greatest propaganda in wildlife conservation at the moment” in addtion to saying that no species of animal has ever been conserved throught he use of game parks or hunting reserves. What more evidence do you need?
Or do you perhaps want evidence that hunting reserves have played and continue to play a vital role in wildlife conservation? All you need to do is look at the history of hunting preserves and game preservation in Europe to demonstrate that fact.
I honestly know of nobody aside from Irwin who suggests that game management isn’t solely and entirely responsible for the existence of the red deer in western Europe.
You could only believe that if you are totally ignorant of of conservation biology in the modern world.
Irwin’s position is no different from a famous and influential doctor who opposes any and all use of condoms. You would presumably argue that such a person is merely a “vocal oponent” of condoms and is not responsible for causing deaths. I argue that such a person will very likely lead to the deaths of numerous persons and will continue to do so for generations.
That is because an influential person who opposes what is probably the only universally applicable and provable means of preventing deaths is very likely to cause deaths. I didn’t think that was really so hard to understand.
At least I note that you have accepted that Irwin talked a lot of ignorant nonsense and mis-educated a lot of people. He was certainly no ally in the fight against ignorance.
The really scary part is that I have seen less than 1/2 hour of Irwin’s work in my lifetime, yet in that half hour I must have heard half a dozen erroneous statements. He quite obviously just said whatever nonsense came into his head without regard for facts. The fact that any random list of Irwin quotes contains several such ignorant statements only confirms that.
Of course all that means that if Irwin did any good in popularising the natural world then it was necessarily counterbalanced by the amount of misinformation he spread. Like I said, a scoreless draw. He promoted as much ignorance as he ever fought.
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Blake**, given that ‘sustainable harvesting’ of wildlife resources is very much a debatable issue, and with the verdict/s still up there (apart from your European Red Deer situation) I don’t really think your claims that Irwin was spouting shit hold very much water, actually. He might well have been, but only future studies and research will decide that, not you and your sanctimonious opinion.
Come back when you have some real stats and facts to debate instead of the prejudiced muesli mix you have now. Condoms and Irwin? Come ON mate…even you can do better than that!
