Google – AFP, 21 November 2013
Leonardo
Dicaprio speaks during a movie premiere on November 1, 2013
in Los Angales
(Getty/AFP/File, Jason Merritt)
|
Washington
— A foundation set up by actor Leonardo DiCaprio pitched in $3 million Thursday
to save tigers in Nepal, whose plan to double the big cats' population has
shown success.
The
"Titanic" heartthrob warned that "time is running out" for
tigers, whose global population in the wild has dwindled to an estimated 3,200
after years of poaching and habitat loss.
The
Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation channeled the $3 million through the World
Wildlife Fund environmental group for improvements in the Terai Arc Landscape,
a stretch of ecologically diverse protected lands bordering India.
"I am
hopeful this grant will help them exceed the goal of doubling the number of
these noble creatures in the wild," DiCaprio said in a statement.
The grant
will fund improvements in border posts and more sophisticated tools to monitor
poaching.
Nepal has
set its goal of doubling the big cats' population by 2022, the next year of the
tiger in the Chinese zodiac.
Nepal's
government said in July that its population of Royal Bengal tigers in the wild
has soared 64 percent to 198 in just four years.
DiCaprio,
who stars in Martin Scorsese's upcoming film "The Wolf of Wall
Street," in May led an art auction that raised $38.8 million for environmental
charity work.
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