Steve Irwin and the Myth of Animal Conservation

By Colman McCarthy

Steve Irwin’s admirers, who hailed him as “the crocodile hunter” and gasped admiringly when he wrestled assorted man-eating creatures into submission, are likely to mourn for some time. His death at 44 in early September came after being pierced in the chest by a stingray near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. For comfort, Irwin’s fans will be entertained for years by reruns on “Animal Planet.” Their hero will live on.

So too, unfortunately, will the myth that Irwin’s escapades had some kind of lasting value that benefited animals. Jumping on top of sharp-toothed crocs and gators, staring down venomous snakes and shouting “crikey!” after he wins the staged contests creates exciting television. But it isn’t conservation, it isn’t respecting the nature of wild animals and it isn’t what creatures deserve: to be left alone and untormented by human beings. Irwin was a showman who happened upon a schtick—hyping fake bravado--that transformed him into a celebrity, at the expense of animals. Or as Irwin called them, “my animals.”

As the earth’s dominating species, or so we obligingly think, humans have accustomed ourselves to subjugating animals. What Alice Walker pointed out is all but forgotten: “the animals of this world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than blacks were made for whites, or women created for men.”

The advocates for animals I most admire are those who do the hard and often hidden political work of getting laws enacted on local, state and federal levels to protect animals against profiteers and exploiters. To name a few of the organizations on which I have long for sound information: the Humane Society of the United States, Compassion Over Killing, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Society for Animal Protective Legislation, United Poultry Concerns, Farm Animal Reform Movement, Animal Legal Defense Fund and many, many others.

Then there are the lone citizens who believe that animals, merely by being alive, deserve not only kindness but substantial justice. In recent years, Bob Barker, the host for 36 years of “The Price Is Right,” has been giving million dollar grants to law schools—Georgetown, Duke, UCLA, Northwestern, Harvard, among them--to create courses in animal rights law. Still in its infancy, animal rights law is where environmental law was in the early 1970s, with people asking “what’s that all about?”

It was the ardent justice-seeking lawyer, William Kunstler, who explained: “I cannot help thinking that our exploitation of animals has a direct link to our exploitation of our perennial human victims: African-Americans, poor whites, Latinos, women, lesbians and gays, social activists, and Asians, to named a few disempowered groups….If we feel that we may exploit nonhumans simply because we are more powerful, and we judge that we will benefit from that exploitation, then discrimination against other disadvantaged groups becomes that much easier.”

It’s unlikely that television cameras will be showing up at law schools to air the animal rights courses. Nor can we expect much media attention for those who testify at congressional hearings or labor anonymously to persuade politicians to enact humane laws. For my money, persistently taking on lobbyists for the meat, dairy and egg industry takes more grit and guts than calling in the cameras while you taunt a bewildered croc.

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