Dressed in a beige safari shirt and shorts, South African-born photographer and herpetologist Austin Stevens paddles through the sawgrass of the Florida Everglades in search of the Burmese python.
While navigating through the thick grass, his eyes lock on something. He bends over to grab his camera and then jumps out of the canoe, pouncing face-first into the swampy water.
“I’ve got him! I’ve got him,” Stevens yells. He emerges from the water with a tight grip on a four-foot American alligator, turns to the camera and says, “I normally wouldn’t do this.”
This is an average day for wildlife thrill-seeker Austin Stevens, host of the self-titled show Austin Stevens Adventures, which began airing episodes in the U.K. last year and tonight is coming to a Canadian television set near you.
In a typical episode, Stevens takes viewers on a journey through rough terrain in search of a particular animal, often a reptile. Along the way, he stops to describe the other animals he encounters.
It is easy to suggest that Stevens and the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin are one and the same. Both engage in risky behaviour with dangerous animals, both share a passion for educating viewers about wildlife in foreign locations, and both will stop at nothing to get the perfect encounter.
It’s Stevens’ passion for photography sets them apart. In every episode, Stevens ensures he has his camera ready to capture stills of exotic animals in their natural surroundings. But has Stevens picked up the environmental torch where Irwin left off, or is he just nuts?
Stevens, 58, has dedicated his life to reptiles, and can recall when his zest for the reptile world began pumping through his veins.
“I was 12 years old and living on the outskirts of Pretoria in South Africa when I found a baby red-lipped herald [snake] under a rock,” he says. “So I caught the snake in a jar, I brought it home and showed it to my parents, and they said, ‘No way, nobody knows about snakes. They are dangerous, venomous.’
“I went upstairs and got some information on it and by the time I got back they had let it go, which was probably the worst thing they could have done because all I did from then on was look for snakes.”
Stevens earned the nickname “Snakemaster” while serving in the South African army, where one of his jobs was to remove deadly snakes. After that, he worked in multiple reptile parks throughout the world, becoming a wildlife advocate and polishing his craft.
In 1986, he set a Guinness World Record for living in a three metre by four metre glass cage containing 36 venomous snakes (including six Black Mambas) for 107 days and nights.
“We were raising funds to help us procure a female gorilla at the Hartebeespoort Dam Snake and Animal Park in Southern Africa, in the hopes that she would mate with the already existing male ‘Kaiser’,” he says. “This is a record that still has not been challenged to this day.”
As terrifying as that was, Stevens says it was not his scariest encounter – that title is reserved for his experience with a Green Anaconda in the Amazon River.
“Sometimes the things I get myself into can get pretty hairy and frightening, but this snake dragged me into the water out of my depth and I couldn’t stand anymore,” he says.
“I had the snake wrapped around me and its whole body weight dragging me down. I didn’t think the snake was trying to kill me but [instead] holding on, and with all that weight I was very frightened that I was going to drown.”
His love for snakes now takes him all over the globe as he films episodes of Austin Stevens Adventures in places such as the Australian outback, the Ethiopian highlands, and the jungles of Costa Rica.
For his part, Irwin has traveled to places including the Galapagos Islands, Madagascar and Arizona. Watching their shows, both Irwin's and Stevens’ enthusiasm about wildlife are apparent, and wearing entertainer and educator hats can be difficult to master. But Stevens is determined to give viewers a unique and often heart-pounding encounter.
“Television is the greatest medium on Earth because it allows for millions of people out there to enjoy something, who might never get the chance to go out there and have a real wildlife experience in the field,” he says.
“Now they don’t have to risk their lives or suffer the discomfort involved and instead they can have the experience on television, which gives them an in-depth look into a wilderness that they could never even imagine.”
Austin Stevens Adventures premières Wed., Feb. 4, at 8 p.m. ET on Discovery Channel.
