When American influencer Mike Holston, better known as 'The Real Tarzan,' leapt from a boat into the shallow waters of Far North Queensland earlier this September, he probably expected applause from his 15.5 million Instagram followers. Instead, he found himself at the center of a fierce controversy that has pitted social media spectacle against the hard-won lessons of wildlife conservation in Australia.
Holston, 31, posted two viral videos in the span of a weekend—first on Friday, September 5, 2025, and again on Sunday, September 7. The first clip shows him chasing a freshwater crocodile through ankle-deep water before wrestling the reptile and holding it around the neck, beaming as he exclaims, “this is what dreams are made of.” In the second, he’s seen pursuing and capturing a small, silent saltwater crocodile on a riverbank at Lockhart River on the Cape York Peninsula. In both cases, Holston released the animals after the stunts, but the backlash was swift and severe.
Bob Irwin, the 86-year-old father of the late Steve Irwin—the beloved ‘Crocodile Hunter’—emerged as Holston’s most vocal critic. In a statement issued Wednesday, September 10, Bob Irwin didn’t mince words, describing Holston as a “d*ckhead” and demanding that Australia’s nature laws be updated to cover social media-driven wildlife stunts. “People visiting our country need to respect our wildlife, or they need to be booted out the door,” he declared, according to news.com.au.
Irwin’s frustration wasn’t just about the act itself, but about the justification some offered by comparing Holston’s antics to those of Steve Irwin. “This isn’t a Steve Irwin issue; this is about an individual interfering with protected fauna,” Bob Irwin insisted. “You can’t even put them in the same sentence. Everything Steve did, from the time he was a little kid, was to respect wildlife and share that message in a way that would give others a healthier respect for animals.”
For Bob Irwin, the difference is clear: Steve Irwin’s work was grounded in conservation, research, and education, always supported by proper permits and a deep understanding of animal welfare. Holston, he argued, “had ‘no clue’ about what he was doing.” The crocodiles in Holston’s videos, Irwin said, were “clearly under extreme stress—it’s disgusting.” He pointed out that handling crocodiles is a specialized skill, and capturing them improperly can cause dangerous stress and lactic acid buildup, potentially leading to fatal consequences for the animals.
Holston’s actions have also drawn the attention of Australian authorities. On September 10, a spokesman for the Queensland Environment Department confirmed to news.com.au that the agency was actively investigating the two videos. “These actions are extremely dangerous and illegal, and we are actively exploring strong compliance action including fines to deter any person from this type of behavior,” the spokesman said. The maximum penalty for interfering with a saltwater crocodile in Queensland is $37,500, with an on-the-spot fine of $8,345. For freshwater crocodiles, the penalty is $27,539. “Let us be clear: people should not attempt to capture freshwater or saltwater crocodiles in Queensland, unless they are trained and licensed to do so.”
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli weighed in as well, calling Holston a “goose” and supporting the ongoing investigation. The incident has reignited a national conversation about how social media is reshaping people’s relationships with wildlife—and not for the better.
Dr. Meg Shaw, a Research Fellow at Monash University’s BehaviourWorks, warned that viral posts like Holston’s can have “disastrous consequences for both humans and wildlife, beyond the immediate risks to serious injury or illness.” She explained to news.com.au that “the more we see this kind of content posted online, the more it is normalised. Viewers can say to themselves ‘oh, this person did it, so it must be fine.’ When these posts are paired with a huge volume of likes and comments, it can be even more motivating for viewers to mimic the behavior in pursuit of the same type of attention.”
Shaw’s research has shown that such content can make endangered animals seem less at risk, encourage the perception that wild animals would make good pets, and contribute to a broader disregard for animal welfare. “In a way, this content is saying ‘this animal is a prop, not a living being,’” she noted. She praised the strong Australian response, saying, “Australians are proud of the animals that call our country home. It’s not just our cute and cuddlies that deserve respect, it’s every creature that calls this country home.”
Bob Irwin, who helped establish Queensland’s Australia Zoo and has long advocated for stricter penalties around wildlife offenses, lamented that the 2024 increase in fines for reckless behavior with crocodiles still didn’t address the explosion of unlawful wildlife content on social media. “This new wave of content is taking conservation down a concerning road,” he wrote. “These posts can have disastrous consequences for both people and wildlife. With crocodiles specifically, they face lethal management when the stunt goes wrong.”
He pointed to a string of recent incidents as evidence of a growing problem, including a 2023 video of an influencer feeding a cooked chicken to a crocodile in north Queensland and a March 2025 episode in which an American removed a baby wombat from its mother. “It’s like a runaway train and it sets a dangerous precedent for others to copy it. The more dramatic, or cruel the interaction, the more money these accounts make.”
Irwin also took aim at what he sees as a lackluster response from authorities. “The repeated line from our regulators ‘we are investigating’ in response to these incidents is wearing thin,” he said. “When are the environment authorities, who are tasked with the protection of our native wildlife, going to step up? The message is only going to sink in when we see these so-called influencers held to account and understand that 15 million followers don’t make you exempt from the laws that protect our wildlife. It was a free for all back in my day but it isn’t now.”
For now, Holston’s fate rests with Queensland’s Environment Department, which is weighing possible fines and further action. Bob Irwin, meanwhile, is calling for even stronger measures—including deportation and new laws targeting social media stunts. “When we first started discussing the reckless stunts with crocodiles increasing on the internet, we joked the new policies should be called ‘the dickhead legislation’,” he said. “And that’s because that’s exactly what content creators like the Real Tarzann are in my books—dickheads.”
This clash between digital bravado and conservation ethics is forcing Australia to reconsider how it protects its wildest inhabitants—and how it deals with those who think the law doesn’t apply when the camera is rolling.
