LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Kenya has long been regarded as one of Africa's most wildlife-friendly countries, and a magnet for safari tourists from around the world. But an escalation in ivory poaching is taking place, and some conservationists are warning that elephants are facing extinction there within ten years unless urgent action is taken. Africa correspondent Ginny Stein travelled to the Maasai Mara for this report.

GINNY STEIN, REPORTER: Kenya's famed Maasai Mara is teeming with wildlife.

Hundreds of thousands of wildebeest have made it to Kenya in their annual migration across the plains of East Africa in search of grass and water.

While all may appear alive and abundant, there's something very wrong.

These plains have become a new front in Africa's ivory wars.

ISAAC ROTICH, GAME GUIDE NABOISHO CONSERVANCY: This looks like an arrow. It looks like an arrow went in. So it's intentional killing for sure.

GINNY STEIN, REPORTER: This young bull elephant was speared to death the day before. His trunk hacked off to allow the poachers to get to its tusks.

ISAAC ROTICH: It's very fresh, you can tell it's moving, so this is very, very new.

GINNY STEIN: For the Maasai herders who have a stake in these lands, each death is painful. Isaac Rotich is one of the leading wildlife guides. He grew up amongst the Maasai.

ISAAC ROTICH: I'm looking for wounds. He looks like he was a very healthy young male. No scratch, no wounds, he hasn't been in the fight but the only wound that killed him was the last spear.

GINNY STEIN: Across Africa tens of thousands of elephants are now being slaughtered annually. The continent's worst wildlife crisis in decades.

ISAAC ROTICH: There's no words to explain, you know, how I feel. I might be sitting here going around and stepping on it but deep inside it's just another ... it's like reducing my livelihood. Instead of me getting younger in heart, and being happy seeing these lives ... it just squishes it, you reduce it.

GINNY STEIN: Here attempts are made to record the death of every elephant and to find those responsible.

JACKSON MAITAI, MARA ELEPHANT PARTNERS: Where the blood started we follow that track up to here. The elephant killers or the poachers themselves must be from a southern village where the elephant was speared.

GINNY STEIN: It seems this elephant was killed to keep it away from farmland. Its tusks an additional incentive.

Kenya's Maasai have long been the country's wildlife protectors.

Community conservancies, like this one, were formed by the Maasai to protect wildlife while giving them an income from it. But the spears and poison arrows now being used show values amongst some have changed. One time protectors have become hunters.

ISAAC ROTICH: This is the damage done when an elephant is killed. They have to cut it almost to the skull, you know, halfway to remove all the tusks and basically this is what kills the elephant, you know. You have to kill it to remove the tusks.

AMOS NJAPIT, RESIDENT GUARD (TRANSLATION): Elephants are dying every week. Every week, every month. So it's quite possible that our elephants will be finished in the next 10 years.

GINNY STEIN: Annette Bullman has lived in Kenya for almost two decades. She came to Kenya from Australia to manage a safari lodge.

ANNETTE BULLMAN, RESIDENT GUARD: There's a chance for all this money, you know, it's very tempting for anybody, whether you're Maasai or South African, you know, or English or American or whoever you are - money has always been the force of corruption in the world.

GINNY STEIN: This is Toto, a teenager. Wildlife photographer Marcel Roundane documented his death.

MARCEL ROUNDANE, PHOTOGRAPHER: He was speared with a poison spear right through his leg. We found him about two weeks after, one week after he was speared.

GINNY STEIN: Annette watched as his family broke away from its herd to say goodbye.

ANNETTE BULLMAN: And they came to him and they wiped his eyes as if he was crying. They cuddled him, they touched him all over. Oh, it was just the saddest thing I've ever seen. We intent 17 days, the 18th day he died that night and he actually died here.

IMARCEL ROUNDANE: If you watched that and you have all this experience with losing elephants and you get close and you know what they're doing and they actually greet you when you come - and then you still lose them, it's like losing a family member. You always say elephants don't forget, but you don't forget an elephant.

ANNETTE BULLMAN: It's usually soul destroying when you spend so much time with the elephant, you really do form a bond with this elephant and it's just such a senseless waste for artefacts.

GINNY STEIN: The Kenyan Government has announced tougher new penalties targeting poachers and traffickers.

ISAAC ROTICH: One of a kind experience to come across such a giant, you know. In other years you used to see them but they're going down very fast. To see something like this it's very, very special.

GINNY STEIN: But there are real fears that such is the appetite for ivory, that it may be too late for Africa's elephants.