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Richard Moller, of The Tsavo Trust, who had been monitoring Satao for several months, said: “There is no doubt that he is dead, killed by an ivory poacher’s poisoned arrow to feed the seemingly insatiable demand for ivory in far off countries. A great life lost so that someone far away can have a trinket on their mantelpiece.”

A soaring demand for ivory in a number of Asian nations has seen poaching reach levels that were last seen in the 1980s before the ivory trade was banned.

“The loss of such an iconic elephant is the most visible and heart-rending tip of this iceberg, this tragedy that is unfolding across the continent,” said Frank Pope of Save The Elephants in Nairobi.

The street value of elephant ivory is now greater than gold, running to tens of thousands of pounds per tusk. Organised criminals are increasingly running poaching gangs and networks, officials have said.

More than 20,000 African elephants were slaughtered in 2013, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has documented the killing of 97 elephants so far this year. Experts dispute official statistics claiming that the number of elephants that have been killed has declined. KWS recorded that 302 elephants were poached in 2013, down from 384 the previous year, of a total estimated population of 38,000 in Kenya.

In March, the renowned conservationist Richard Leakey described poaching in Kenya as a “national disaster,” saying poachers were operating with “outrageous” impunity.