Nairobi — We smelt her before we found her, a six-month old cheetah cub practically garrotted by the rusty wire snare. She was still warm and smelt like a kitten.

The leader of the de-snaring team run by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) working with Kenya Wildlife Service and funded by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) pulled her dusty, inert body out of the cunningly hidden trap from where she had innocently walked into and become ensnared.

The young cheetah would have died an agonisingly painful death, trying to struggle free for hours as the blade-like noose fastened tighter around her neck, stifling her last breath.

Her lifeless eyes were glassy from the pain, saliva covering her beautiful coat, which was damp from the exertion of attempting to escape. There were imprints in the red soil of another cheetah close-by, perhaps the cubs' mother? What a waste of a precious animal! What a waste of Kenya's dwindling feline population, especially among cheetahs!

That day the cheetah wasn't the only victim of the escalating but completely illegal bush-meat trade - it is considered by leading conservationists not only unsustainable, but on the verge of being a national disaster.

In the Tsavo park, the de-snaring team came across three giraffes, or rather, their remains. The stinking body parts were probably already a week old.

All that was left were the heads still tangled in the hangman's nooses they inadvertently walked into. Bluebottle flies were crawling in and out of their nostrils and eye-sockets by the thousands, while the legs - all 12 of them - lay in a heap together with the stomach entrails like the leftovers from an ogre's meal.

The poachers had harvested their ill-got gains on-site and fled the scene.

Working together with KWS who provide back-up in the form of armed patrols/rangers, the de-snaring teams comprise dedicated, well-trained professionals. There are six teams operating in and along the borders of Tsavo East and West, who seek out and dismantle numerous snares as well as an alarming number of wildlife corpses on a daily basis.

Occasionally the team arrives in time to rescue an animal, and to have it treated by the DSWT mobile vet unit who work closely with KWS and release the animal back into the park. In the Tsavo West National Park, poachers have set thousands of illegal snares that indiscriminately kill everything, including the cheetah we came across.

Some 151 snares were dismantled in the eastern border of the park (near Maktau Gate) in December alone, a conservative figure due to the late rains. The peak culling period is the dry season between June and October when people and wildlife are struggling for survival, said the team leader, Paul (not his real name.)

Paul's diary entry for October 25th reads " - patrolled in Wanjala Hills, removed 343 snares, came across a track with fresh footprints indicating recent poaching activity in area. Our group separated into two units, one group followed the (human) prints which led towards the community dwellings, the other back into the park." No bushmeat was found that day, having already been retrieved by the poachers, but they did rescue a dik-dik."

Particularly depressing are some of the tactics used. As we walked, we came across fencelines a metre or more high built from cut branches, and especially thorn bush that extended for miles.

Craftily hidden within the thick web of branches are steel wire snares. Wildlife is then chased into the barrier, often by dogs, and in their attempt to escape, the animals are caught up in the traps set in the crude structures.

According to Paul, one of these fencelines was 20 km long. He said that no sooner had his team dismantled one than another was built in its place. While they spent time taking one barrier to pieces and burning the dried bush, the poachers could easily observe and hear them and would move to another area with different tactics.

We came across an abandoned rubbish dump littered with the debris of blackened tyres. Paul explained that within the fabric of the rubber tyres are metal strands. The tyres are burnt until the wires are exposed and this provides the poachers with a ready source of snares.

What was interesting though was that the rubbish dump was at a mining camp, also recently deserted. Apparently the gang of miners come every year and remove hundreds of tons of iron ore. The transport company - Hussein Dairy Transporters - which pays Sh40 a wheelbarrow load for the ore returns nothing to the community or county council, but offers employment to a few locals who labour in the hot sun to break up the rocks by hand.

And coincidentally, whenever the mining gang are around, the level of poaching increases. The owner of the company was unavailable for comment.

What is surprising is that poachers operate - and are discovered - miles inside national park boundaries. They come under the cover of darkness, blinding dik-dik with torches and then simply cutting their hamstrings with a scythe or bludgeoning their spinal chords so that the helpless creatures cannot run away.

Donkeys pulling cartloads of carcasses have been found deep within the parks, especially the neglected corners such as Maktau, where there are few roads and hardly any visitors.

There are vast tracts of land not covered by KWS surveillance, but where wildlife migrate in seasonal spirals following the rain/grazing patterns.

On another day, Paul's team caught seven poachers who were operating 10km from the Ziwani Gate using donkeys, bicycles and even handcarts to ferry the bushmeat out of the park to the ready markets in Maktau, Njukini and Tanzania.

The poachers themselves are not always from poor communities, struggling to make a living. The bushmeat trade has become an increasingly commercial market and those involved include businessmen, opportunists and even shifta.

They employ traditional hunters good at tracking - and money has upped the ante. A giraffe can sell for Sh10,000, while a zebra sells at Sh2,500, so traditional hunters are no longer killing wildlife just to supplement their own diet with extra protein, but poaching and selling game meat for profit.

Carcasses and selected cuts are available fresh in practically every village in Kenya - mostly in seedy kumi-kumi joints. But as the rapacious trade becomes ever more commercial, the meat is turning up in towns and cities, disguised as ng'ombe [beef] and mbuzi [goat meat], filleted and presented as choice cuts.

You might think that poaching carries a hefty fine. After all, hunting was banned in 1978, and wildlife is officially protected under the Wildlife Act. But this is not the case. Punishments handed down by current judiciary practice are exceedingly lenient. Six months is a typical sentence and sometimes the poachers are even acquitted.

This is a real blow to the morale of the KWS rangers/de-snaring teams working to apprehend poachers, because they are the ones who witness the slaughter on a daily basis and put their lives at risk in the process.

On the other side of the border, the Tanzanian Government takes poaching seriously and the punishment is imprisonment for 15-20 years. So it is no wonder that we now have an influx of poachers from Tanzania helping themselves to Kenya's natural resources.

Two Tanzanian poachers near Lake Jipe were recently arrested - their plunder two eland and some dik-dik. A sport gun, usually used for hunting elephants was recovered.

Paul's team hopes that the justice system will re-think the issue and pass down harsher sentences.

Who cares about Kenya's rapidly diminishing wildlife? Mr James Isiche of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) says: "IFAW and several other organisations recognise the growing trade in bushmeat and are working to reduce the commercial exploitation of animals, including the protection of wildlife habitats, and assisting animals in distress. We rely on political will and government vision to enhance and further this cause."

The combined efforts of KWS and the DSWT-funded teams save 3,000 animals each year on average from prolonged and agonising death. The de-snaring teams run educational projects in communities targeting school-children.

The fact that duiker calves have been returned to KWS rangers suggests that the mind-set may be shifting and that the younger generation are more inclined to see the wildlife as an intrinsic part of the natural ecosystem not as a commodity to poach.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Unless something is done, the wildlife is going to be decimated. Paul estimates that in just one area of Tsavo Park there are 10 groups of poachers working, 15 days of the month, killing numerous animals on each mission.

If it were just a matter of one or two animals being taken to feed a hungry family, the authorities could afford to turn a blind eye, but the fact is the levels of animals being poached has become so serious an issue that unless it is challenged, it will create problems in the delicate balance of the ecosystem.

Ms Winnie Kiiru of BornFree says. "We as Kenyans will have to take a critical look at our value system with regard to the conservation of our wildlife. The notion that we have abundant resources and that we can continue to harvest with impunity is false. We have to address rural poverty to ease the dependence on wildlife meat for subsistence. Poaching for commercial purposes must be stopped through consistent and effective policing and law enforcement. Consumers of wildlife meat must also be made aware of the dangers of eating meat that has not been inspected."

The precious animals lost in the senseless slaughter on a daily basis include giraffe, eland, kudu, gerenuk, dik-dik, buffalo, impala, wart-hog, kongoni and ostrich, as well as elephant calves and cheetah.