Design of an automatic escaped animal detection and monitoring system: a case study of Volcanoes National Park (VNP)

Abstract

The results have been shown that the people especially farmers living at the edge of Volcanoes National Park (VNP) practiced agricultural business due to the fertile soil found in the region. The rising number of agronomies in the zone, number of tourists, and illegal forest users such as poaching, and deforestation cause wild animals to get out of their habitats. Therefore, their crops are raided by forest animals which present a likely risk to damage crops whenever they get out of the forest. The current systems such as “Buffer Wall also known as wall of stones” was manually operated; electric fence systems resulted in death and pain to wild animals. Due to the development of automatic systems for detecting and monitoring all moving wild animals and intruders, it was stated that using automation at Buffer wall could be helpful for both wild animals and farmers keep safe. Security is an importance in the VNP whereby detection and monitoring wildlife would determine the needs by park officials. The objectives of developing an Automatic Escaped Animal Detection and Monitoring System were to reduce the probability of crop raids, death and injuries between wild animals and farmers, warning the wild animals through the use of buzzer, speaker with a recorder voice of lion and block of LEDs to remain in their habitats and the notifications sent to the park officials related to the forest animals getting out of the forest. Since wild animals and intruders found in buffer zone targeting to pass by the buffer wall for crop raiding and poaching activities; this system should primarily use sensing devices to detect and monitor their presence. On the other hand, for buffer wall security, warning equipment’s such as block of LEDs, Buzzer, SIREN Alarm and speaker should all together be activated. Whenever wild animals and trespassers would search to pass by another part would be activated the same way as the previous. The specialty of this technological system developed was to automate manual and improve the current systems by using Arduino NANO Microcontroller to execute system’s operations, GPS NEO 6M for locating moving wild animal, Ultrasonic sensor for detecting wildlife and calculating its speed, PIR sensor to detect intruders, GSM SIM900 to notify park rangers, reduction of crop raiding, and finally reducing death and pain of wild animals caused by current systems.