The world’s only known white giraffe has been fitted with a tracking device in north-eastern Kenya, conservationists say.

The male giraffe was until recently one of three giraffes with the rare genetic trait. But a white female and her calf were killed by poachers in March in a village in Kenya’s Garissa county.

Its white appearance is due to a condition called leucism, which causes skin cells to have no pigmentation.

The GPS tracking device was placed on one of its horns on 8 November and will give hourly updates of its location.

It will enable rangers to monitor its movements and protect it from poachers.

The board of Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy, where the giraffe lives, had requested the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to fit the giraffe with the tracking device.

As of March, there were three white giraffes in the world but poachers killed two. Their skeletal remains were found in Garissa in the east of the country, Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy said in a statement at the time.

Now only a lone male, borne of the slaughtered female, remains alive.

The white giraffe is only found in Kenya, making the two deaths at the hands of armed poachers particularly galling.

The manager of the Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy, Mohammed Ahmednoor, said the two killed giraffes were last spotted in December 2019.

“This is a very sad day for the community of Ijara and Kenya as a whole. We are the only community in the world who are custodians of the white giraffe,” he said.

“Its killing is a blow to the tremendous steps taken by the community to conserve rare and unique species and a wake-up call for continued support to conservation efforts.”

It is not clear who killed the animals and what their motivation was.