Automatic Escaped Animal Detection and Monitoring System: A Case study of Volcanoes National Park (VNP) in Rwanda

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, forest animals 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. The primary creation of this paper is to develop an Automatic Escaped Animal Detection and Monitoring System. 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 keeping safe. 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 using 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 wild animals getting out of the forest. This system should primarily use sensing devices to detect and monitor their presence. The study reveals that the people especially farmers living at the edge of Volcanoes National Park (VNP) can be protected using this system. 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 the death and pain of wild animals caused by the current systems.