Certain investigations on signal and image processing based animal recognition system to resolve wildlife conflict

Abstract

One of the serious issues that all developed countries are facing nowadays is the conflict between humans and wildlife. Till now, communities residing in hill areas use some of the traditional methods, such as firing crackers, bright spotlights, throwing stones, and beating drums were used to redirect the wildlife back to the deep jungle. The rescue (kumki) elephants are used by forest officials to drive the problematic animal into the jungle or trapped with a cage. The conflict points more predominantly near the hilly forest border areas. The conflict result in human death and injury, property damage, and Livestock loss. People, to save themselves try to attack wildlife which results in animal death or escaped with some wound. Animal death occurs due to various reasons such as Animal Poaching, Train Hit, Electrocution, Accidental fall into the well, etc. Considering this a serious issue, we have developed an early warning and monitoring module to mitigate the human-wildlife conflict. This module helps in the following ways to prevent both people and animals. newline1) By providing an earlier intimation to people, forest officials, and Local/FM Radio channels regarding the anticipated entry of wildlife into human settlements. newline2) Conveying earlier intimations to forest officials helps in taking instantaneous action to drive the wildlife back inside the forest. newlineWe have investigated to analyze the pattern of Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) in some of the ranges of Anamalai Tiger Reserves (ATR), such as Valparai, Pollachi, Ulandy, and Manambolly newline