George Clooney Battles Militant Terrorists To Save Elephants

By Melissa Cronin

Published on 1/30/2015 at 12:35 PM

<p> <a class="checked-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clooney#mediaviewer/File:George_Clooney_66%C3%A8me_Festival_de_Venise_(Mostra)_3Alt1.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a><span></span> </p>
<p> <a class="checked-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clooney#mediaviewer/File:George_Clooney_66%C3%A8me_Festival_de_Venise_(Mostra)_3Alt1.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a><span></span> </p>

Anti-poaching rangers who trying to stop terrorist groups from killing elephants have an unexpected ally: actor George Clooney.

Clooney's organization is targeting poachers associated with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a militant Christian extremist group operating in northern Uganda and South Sudan, known for child sex slavery, horrific mutilations and cutting the faces off elephants with chainsaws in order to remove their tusks. Ivory sales continue to fund their ammunition and supplies.

"Elephant poaching is now keeping Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army alive," Sasha Lezhnev, an associate director for policy at Enough Project, said in a release this week.

Known as the Satellite Sentinel Project, Clooney's operation is pairing with two others to help outfit elephants with satellite collars, identify locations of poachers' camps and send the data to Congolese rangers, Bloomberg reports. The organization hopes that better data will help stop poachers and cut off their funds.

Clooney has gotten creative in raising funds for his philanthropic efforts. In 2014, he announced that donations to the Satellite Sentinel Project would enter fans in a contest be his date to the premiere of "The Monuments Men."

Donate to Clooney's Satellite Sentinel Project here.