Back in late FebruaryLeonardo DiCaprio finally won his Oscar. But the actor, who snagged the award for his leading role in The Revenant, used most of his time on stage to make a different, but not totally unexpected, kind of speech. "Making The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world," he said. "Climate change is real. It is happening right now." And now the actor-environmentalist has just returned from a trip to Indonesia, where he caused quite a stir with some comments he made on an Instagram post.
After visiting Mount Leuser National Park in Sumatra, a western Indonesian island, DiCaprio posted several photos to Instagram where he wrote about the preserved rainforest and how it is home to the Sumatran Orangutan, a critically endangered species. He also wrote about the Sumatran elephants and how palm oil plantations are causing some serious problems for these animals. "The expansion of Palm Oil plantations is fragmenting the forest and cutting off key elephant migratory corridors, making it more difficult for elephant families to find adequate sources of food and water," he said.
Because of the high demand for palm oil, practices to farm the product have been pretty controversial among environmentalists. The land is so much in need that extreme methods of deforestation, methods like slash-and-burn, have been used to make space for these kinds of plantations.
Following his postings, the Indonesian government got upset, claiming that DiCaprio used his time in Indonesia to cause trouble.
"We support his concern to save the Leuser ecosystem," Heru Santoso, the spokesman for the Directorate General for Immigration at the Law and Human Rights Ministry said. "But we can blacklist him from returning to Indonesia at any time if he keeps posting incitement or provocative statements in his social media."
If DiCaprio's dedication to the environment is anything like his dedication to the craft of acting, we're very certain he's not going to care too much about these threats.
Check out some of the photos from his trip to Indonesia below.
