I T HAS BEEN almost a week since Steve Irwin, Australia's famed "Croc Hunter," died in an undersea encounter with a stingray and, in that time, he has suffered the fate of all celebrities who die: He's been overexposed on television by many who never did get what he was all about.

There was certainly no secret to this. As he said himself in an interview a few years ago, he was a passionate (his word) wildlife conservationist.

He underestimated himself. Irwin had, by the time of his accident, become the leading international spokesman not only for wildlife conservation but for something larger.

With the sometimes hokey showmanship that engaged millions of TV viewers on "Animal Planet" and made him the talk of office e-mailers everywhere, Irwin dissolved the barrier between our urban way of life and the outside world we all live in and depend upon.

I had laughed at the guy and done my share of Irwin imitations, but news of his death really took the wind out of me. To my surprise, the death of a 44-year-old guy who wrestles crocodiles in the Land Down Under seemed to cast a pall over my day. And no sooner had it done so and I knew it than I wondered--why?

Irwin, if you paid attention to what he said, was dedicated to the idea that we need to be good stewards of the planet and the creatures that live on it. And he knew we've been cutting ourselves off from that wild world for a long time as we become increasingly urbanized.

Now, those ideas are old hat. They've been around for decades. But it takes a Steve Irwin to spin them out so that we'll laugh and take them in along with all that derring-do he thrived on for the TV cameras.

But I can't say he did it all just for the cameras. No, long before he caught the camera's eye, Irwin was a champion surfer, as those old videos they aired this week showed so dramatically. I don't believe I've ever seen anyone ride a wave longer than Irwin did in one particular sequence. In the end, it was rough on his knees and he had to give it up.