Though he’s been a household name ever since “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” hit screens all over the world, the notorious Hollywood playboy and brilliant actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, is taking his staying power and putting it elsewhere. The star, hailed for his on-screen efforts, has been silently fueling campaigns to save wildlife – both on land and in the sea – since 1998. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, as the website reads, has been “working on pressing environmental and humanitarian issues through grant making, campaigning and media prospects” by focusing on land, oceans and species conservation, climate change and disaster efforts, all with the end-goal of creating a better, safer planet.

To date, the philanthropic organization includes a conservation effort in Nepal to protect tigers from extinction by working collaboratively with local communities and the World Wildlife Fund; an international collaborative called “Oceans 5” to ending overfishing while creating more marine reserves; an initiative to save the world’s last rainforests in conjunction with the WWF, Frankfort Zoological Society, the Australian Orangutan Project, Kehati and Eyes on the Forest; a collaborative effort between six different organizations hailing from five different countries to secure international trade restrictions for five species of threatened sharks; a project to access clean water that includes a grant to Concern Worldwide, which provides 430,000 people in Sierra Leone, Darfur, Mozambique and Tanzania with access to clean water; and an initiative to protect Antarctica by formalizing a coalition of marine reserves.

In each one of his initiatives, DiCaprio has taken a strong stance to protect the world and its creatures and they naturally are, and has put a surplus of man and well as monetary power to aid in those efforts. It’s his belief that by working together, humanity and the natural world can live and work together harmoniously.