Steve Irwin, who has died during underwater filming aged 44 after a stingray barb pierced his heart, was known through his documentaries on the cable TV channel Animal Planet to some 500 million people in more than 120 countries.

As the exuberant, golden-haired, khaki-wearing and apparently fearless Crocodile Hunter, he got very close to — and even wrestled — numerous apex predators. His unscripted narration was punctuated with "Crikey!" and "Look at this beauty!"

Many called him a thrill seeker, but he called himself a wildlife warrior. He was in fact a highly knowledgeable natural historian, whose mission was to educate people by enthusing them. "If you can’t get wilds into people’s hearts", he said, "then we haven’t got a hope in heck of saving them — because people don’t want to save something they don’t know."

Stephen Robert Irwin was born in Melbourne in 1962. When he was 8 the family moved to Queensland, where they started the small Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park in Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast.

Irwin was involved from an early age: he helped to look after the reptiles, having been given a scrub python for his sixth birthday (for which he started to catch fish and rodents) and by the age of 9 was jumping into rivers at night and catching crocodiles with his bare hands.

In time he became one of the stars of the Queensland Government’s rogue crocodile relocation programme. Many of the crocodiles were relocated to the family’s park, which was expanded in 1987.

Four years later Irwin took over management of the park, renaming it Australia Zoo, and the following year married Terri, who had been a visitor to the park. They went on a crocodile-trapping honeymoon in northern Australia, which — because of a chance meeting with his old friend John Stainton, a television producer — became the first episode of The Crocodile Hunter series.

Ten one-hour episodes were made over the following three years, and more than 50 in total. Irwin was typically to be seen crawling towards wild crocodiles, snakes, goannas and spiders, among many other animals.

"I would never blame an animal if it bit me, that is for sure," he said to one interviewer, "because I’m at fault, not them". He later estimated that he had been bitten more than 1,000 times. He was sanguine as ever when his leg was "chomped" by a saltwater crocodile and needed 12 stitches. "I heal so quickly," he said. "I tell you what, if you cut my arm off I would grow a new one."

Irwin in fact felt rather more fear than he showed, and was particularly edgy in the presence of parrots. "For some reason parrots have to bite me. That’s their job. I don’t know why that is. They’ve nearly torn my nose off."

The popularity of Irwin’s programmes boosted business in reptile parks around Australia. Conscious of the educational impact he could have, he frequently reminded his public that many of the animals — including 17 of the 23 crocodile species — were rare or endangered.

He fulfilled his mission as an environmentalist by creating International Crocodile Rescue and the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation — which later became an independent charity and was renamed Wildlife Warriors Worldwide.

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