Leonardo DiCaprio’s foundation gave $1m to save elephants from ivory poaching

Illegal hunting and the ivory trade have reduced the populations of elephants in Africa drastically over the past century. Millions of these mammals once roamed the iconic jungles, but their long ivory tusks made them targets of big game hunters and poachers who have decimated their numbers by roughly 95% over the past 100 years.

The ivory trade drives a brutal campaign of international poaching that killed 22,000 elephants in 2012 alone, despite a global ban on the sale of ivory.According to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), there are an estimated 415,000 African elephants, but other organisations put their numbers even lower, claiming that those "may ultimately prove to be optimistic."In order to save the elephants, a joint initiative was launched by Save the Elephants and the Wildlife Conservation Network, titled the Elephant Crisis Fund.

Started in 2013, it had an initial target of raising $5 million over three years to provide funding for global projects to stop poaching, trafficking and the demand for ivory.In 2014, at a gala in Malibu held in support of the fund, they made major progress toward the goal. Hollywood legend Leonardo DiCaprio ended up giving the initiative not only his star power, but also a $1 million grant from his foundation, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

“Elephant poaching is a brutal crisis, with more than 30,000 elephants killed last year alone. The decimation of these animals is something we have the power to stop, and the Elephant Crisis Fund is a crucial part of the solution,” said the Hollywood actor in a statement. In total, the Elephant Crisis Fund raised $2 million during the 2014 Malibu gala.Douglas-Hamilton, a researcher who has spent more than 50 years studying elephants in the wild, is the founder of Save the Elephants.

“The only future for elephants is for governments, organisations, and individuals to join together in their support,” said Douglas-Hamilton back in 2014. “What we have seen in Los Angeles has given us greater hope than ever, as a generous donation by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation was matched by this astonishing community.

”The event was attended by a number of Hollywood stars including director Rupert Wyatt, singer Barbra Streisand, actor Jonah Hill, Glee star Dianna Agron, actor Dermot Mulroney, Snow White And The Huntsman actress Liberty Ross, Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine, and Mad Men actress Elisabeth Moss.Then in 2016, Netflix released a documentary, 'The Ivory Game', produced by DiCaprio, that Indiewire described as 'a real-life ecological thriller' about the illegal ivory trade. “If James Bond turned his attention to animal rights issues, he might find himself in the middle of this hidden war,” the publication said.That same year, the United States took action to stop illegal poaching and protect endangered elephants by imposing a near-total ban on the commercial trade of African elephant ivory in order to reduce global demand.

Many countries followed suit, including Hong Kong, which was the primary transit and processing hub, and China, which overtook Japan as the world’s largest importer of ivory in the 2000s.Over the past ten years, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), says that elephant poaching and ivory trafficking have gone down overall. However, other groups still state numbers in excess of 30,000 as there is no hard reliable data.

“The only future for elephants is for governments, organisations, and individuals to join together in their support,” said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save The Elephants.Over the years, DiCaprio has been heavily invested in animal conservation. In 2013, he hosted an art auction raising $38.8M for global conservation initiatives. His foundation has given $3 million for Oceana’s ocean conservation programs and $3 million for WWF’s tiger program in Nepal.Recently, he and the Bezos Earth Fund launched the Phoenix Species Project, an initiative dedicated to recovering endangered species. The $200M fund will provide support to recover 100 species facing imminent extinction spanning mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, invertebrates and plants from 30 countries in habitats ranging from oceans to volcanic plains.