Leonardo DiCaprio's foundation donated $1 million to save African elephants being killed for ivory tusks

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 initiati...