Known for their sweet meat, commercial hunters trap and butcher them, before selling the produce in markets and roadside stalls - sometimes for as little as 30p per pound.

But with giraffe numbers dwindling from 140,000 to just 80,000 in little more than 15 years, conservationists fear that if the industrial-scale slaughter continues some sub-species of the creature could become extinct within a short period of time. 

Many are caught in crude snares, 'which pull tight around their necks or legs, causing strangulation and horrific wounds,' 

according to Richard Bonham, the Director of Operations for the Big Life Foundation in Kenya.

As the noose gradually tightens, it can take some hours if not days for them to pass away, he added. 

'Snares are cruel. Animals often die lingering and painful deaths or they might break the snare and develop festering wounds that just don't heal,' said Dr Stephanie Romanach of The African Wildlife Conservation Fund. 

'Poachers frequently set large numbers of snares and forget where they set them or just leave them in the bush and what's the result? Large numbers of animals killed unnecessarily.' 

Bonham pioneered the Community Game Scout concept in the late 1980s by employing four local Maasai warriors to collect the snares which were appearing in growing quantities.

Over 20 years later the project has expanded to employing and training over 100 game scouts from the local community and operating over a large swathe of Kenya. 

But as the human population grows, so to does the demand for meat, even thought hunting the creatures has been illegal in Kenya for some time.  

While snares remain a popular form of hunting, resort to more basic methods of killing the noble beasts. 

Bonham said some hunters use poisoned arrows, while their better armed counterparts gun them down with modern assault rifles. 

'Those poaching at night blind the animals with bright spotlights,' he said. 'Then they approach the frozen animals and hack through their legs with machetes.' 

(dailymail.co.uk)