BINDI Irwin has joined the anti-fur campaign, instructing the Australia Zoo shop to take a drink holder covered in fake fur off its shelves because it sent out the wrong message.

The eight-year-old daughter of the late Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, believes it is important to carry on her father's conservation message, her mother Terri Irwin says.

“Last night she came to me with a drink holder from the shop here at the zoo,” Mrs Irwin told The Mail on Sunday's You magazine in England.

“It was covered in fake fur.

“She said she didn't think we should sell it because it gave the message that fur was OK, even if it was fake. And it's not OK.

“She didn't think Steve would like it.

“Bindi had a meeting with the director of merchandising this morning and now it's off the shelves.”

Mrs Irwin said the fact Bindi had grown up at the zoo north of Brisbane had helped her daughter cope with the death of her father, who was killed when a stingray barb pierced his chest last September.

“You can imagine that with 1000 animals, things are being born and dying all the time,” Mrs Irwin told the magazine.

“We have a wildlife hospital right here. Little animals come in and they don't always make it.

“Bindi saw that and developed a healthy understanding that life is one part of what it's all about. And then you die and you go on to the next part.”

It had been harder for Bindi's three-year-old brother, Robert, to understand his father's death.

“Robert has had a much more difficult time and I attribute that to the lack of knowledge about death ... there's a lot of explaining,” Mrs Irwin said.