A prominent American investigator of the illegal ivory and rhino horn trade in Africa and Asia, Esmond Bradley-Martin has been found dead in his Nairobi home with a stab wound on his neck.

The 57-year-old Bradley-Martin had spent decades tracking the movement of animal products mostly from Africa to markets in Asia.

Paula Kahumbu, the Chief Executive of Wildlife Direct, an organization focused on protecting animal lives in Kenya said the death of Bradley-Martin who was about to publish a report exposing how the ivory trade had shifted from China to neighbouring countries, was a very big loss for conservation.

Kahanbu added: “His work revealed the scale of the problem and made it impossible for the Chinese government to ignore.”

Bradley -Martins, a former United Nations special envoy for rhino conservation was instrumental in China’s decision to ban its illegal rhino trade in 1993.

He is the second prominent conservationist to die in East Africa in the past year. South African Wayne Lotter whose work targeted ivory smuggling from Africa to Asia was shot dead in Tanzania in August last year.