This week is Women’s History Week and to celebrate, I decided to write about an inspirational young woman with a familiar story. Bindi Irwin grew up in the spotlight. With a father like Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, she had an inevitable kind of fame. Bindi was first introduced to the world as an adorable, bright-eyed little girl that loved her father and wanted to be just like him. Now, she works at the Australia Zoo and is actively carrying on her father’s environmental conservation legacy.
Alongside her mother, Terri, and brother, Robert, Bindi not only works at the Australia Zoo daily, but she also tours the world spreading the message about the importance of wildlife conservation by going on talk shows, exposing people to the types of animals she works with at the zoo, and other such activities. But before this work, as a child, Bindi starred in her own TV show, Bindi: The Jungle Girl which aired in 2005, she starred in the movie Free Willy: Escape from Pirate’s Cove in 2010, and in her adult life she has received several recognitions and awards for her conservation work. In 2013 she was recognized as one of Queensland’s “125 Leading Women of 2013”, has successfully concluded a 6-year campaign to prevent mining in the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve, she won Queensland’s “Premier’s Sustainability Young Achiever Award” in 2015, she has presented awards, she’s been featured in magazines, she’s had hotel rooms and Barbie dolls modeled in her honor, and she’s played a lead role on the Irwin family’s return to Animal Planet in the show, Crikey! It’s the Irwins.
Bindi plays an active role at Australia Zoo taking care of the animals, building new exhibits, working alongside the vets at the Animal Hospital, and ensuring the well-being and safety of all of the zoo’s animals as well as the animals at Steve Irwin’s Wildlife Reserve. She helps ensure that every person who visits the zoo learns not just about their animals, but also about how to protect them and ensure their future in their natural habitats. She, alongside her brother and her mother and the hundreds of Australia Zoo employees, instills just how important and precious each and every animal is.
(Photo Cred Animal Planet/Getty Images)
Bindi is a wildlife warrior and an inspiration to every little girl who wants to be a vet or wildlife warrior, just like her. She is a woman that is a force to be reckoned with and a woman that inspires action, not just observation. She is passionate about the world she lives in and has a love of wildlife, and she has the determination to save the animals that she loves. Bindi and the rest of her family have taken Steve Irwin’s dream and passion and amplified it into something far greater than he could’ve ever imagined. She’s a woman on a mission, and nothing can stand in her way. She’s my hero, and she should be yours too.
For more information, check out the Australia Zoo website, https://www.australiazoo.com.au/.