Leonardo DiCaprio’s green campaign group has been given £28,800 of taxpayers’ cash to lobby for ‘rewilding’.
The charity backed by the Oscar-winning actor, who is worth an estimated £200million, received the grant to protect a species of dwarf buffalo called the Tamaraw in the Philippines by conserving land from development, allowing it to remain wild.
As ‘official assistance for development’, the sum appears in accounts of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s green campaign group has been given £28,800 of taxpayers’ cash
DiCaprio is 47 years old and launched Re:wild conservation project last year. The initiative has received large donations.
According to its website the actor ‘has provided more than $100million (£75 million) in grants to a variety of programmes and projects’, with Re:wild described as ‘the latest undertaking linked to DiCaprio’s environmental activism’.
Don’t Look Up is the star’s recent movie. It depicts a dangerous comet headed towards Earth, which many believe to be a metaphor for climate changes.
A grant was given to the charity in order to save the Tamaraw dwarf buffalo from being destroyed by development and to allow the animal to be left wild.
His role was described by him as: “It was an amazing gift to have been a part in a movie that captured exactly what we are going through.”
Recently, the actor was criticized for traveling from New York to Miami in just one day after speaking at Cop26’s climate summit in Glasgow.
According to Defra, the support for projects is based on local actions that address habitat destruction and loss as well as unsustainable use.