Crikey...

Steve Irwin died yesterday. Conservation has suffered an enormous loss. Whatever you might think of his style, his passion was genuine and he put his money where his mouth was. He was a treasure, and he's gone.

Contrary to what some people have said, I didn't expect him to die like this. Well, nobody expected him to die like this: eaten by a crocodile or killed by a snake, maybe, but not like this. A stingray barb to the heart - that's a freak thing; you don't expect that. But I always thought of his apparently dangerous behaviour as just that: apparently dangerous. It worried me a bit that someone might emulate him and get hurt, but he never pretended the animals he was around weren't dangerous (I'll always remember that Fed Ex commercial he did... ), and I don't think anyone ever was.

Lots of people emulated him in other ways, though: many people have come into the conservation and ecology fields, or even just zoology, because of him. He will be missed.