Leonardo DiCaprio has long since become one of Hollywood’s most committed activists for environmental and animal conservation movements. He recently gave his support to the bill banning the shark fin trade in California, and was added to the jury for the Zayed Future Energy Prize because of his environmental work.

Now, the actor/activist will be leading a campaign by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) raising awareness of endangered elephants. IFAW’s Animal Action Education program features a campaign each year during Animal Action Week. This year, October 3-9 will be all about elephants and how you can help protect them ivory poaching, a serious and continuing threat to elephant populations. The organization’s Animal Action page provides several ways young activists can get involved with the campaign including collecting petition signatures, submitting artwork, and educational videos.

DiCaprio says,

In the past century, the number of elephants in the wild has declined by 50 percent. Their disappearance could devastate ecosystems and have a lasting impact on the biodiversity of our planet. I hope this program will inspire and empower you to help protect elephants worldwide.

IFAW has expressed their enthusiasm at having Leo on-board and hopes that it will get the elephants the attention and help that they need.

To give you an idea just how serious and horrifying ivory poaching can be, it usually involve decapitating the elephant or cutting off the elephants trunk. These are not like teeth people. When an elephant is poached for it’s ivory, it usually involves killing the elephant or death results shortly after. Here are a couple images below just to make this a little more real to you. If you do your own research you are sure to find a collection of graphic photography I chose not to put up on the site.

Here’s a great article to learn more about the grave effects of ivory poaching