Every August, Steve Irwin's family packs up and disappears into the crocodile country of Cape York, Australia's remote northern tip. They are not there to visit a memorial. They are there to work, on 330,000 acres of wilderness that Australia bought and named after him, a stretch bigger than New York City.

A Reserve Bigger Than New York City

The Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve covers roughly 135,000 hectares of far north Queensland, land the Australian government set aside as a tribute after his death in 2006.

It protects some of the country's richest freshwater habitat, including the Wenlock River, home to estuarine crocodiles, sawfish and speartooth sharks. In 2013, the Queensland government moved to permanently ban mining across the reserve.

The Study That Outlived Him

In 2008, two years after Steve's death, Terri, Bindi and Robert Irwin partnered with the University of Queensland to keep the crocodile research going on the Wenlock River, using capture methods he had developed himself.

Every crocodile caught gets fitted with an acoustic tag with a decade-long battery life; the larger ones also get a GPS tracker. The team has now logged over 10 million data recordings on how crocodiles move, dive and regulate their body temperature.

They've tagged nearly 300 crocodiles since the study began, in what Australia Zoo calls the world's longest-running crocodile research project.

Twenty Years Later, Still Out There

Steve Irwin died on September 4, 2006. Twenty years on, the reserve that carries his name is still protected, still studied, and still visited by the family that runs it.

Each year, the trip has become what Australia Zoo describes as "almost a pilgrimage" for the Irwins back to the Wenlock River, with the crocodile count still climbing every August.

Professor Craig Franklin of the University of Queensland leads the scientific side of the project, which Australia Zoo calls the largest and most comprehensive study of crocodiles anywhere in the world.

Photo credits: Steve Irwin at the Crocoseum, Australia Zoo, 2003 (Biatch2, CC BY-SA 3.0); the Crocoseum at Australia Zoo, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0). Both via Wikimedia Commons.

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