ECO-Guard: An Integrated AI Sensor System for Monitoring Wildlife and Sustainable Forest Management

In India, 12% of wild animals are threatened with extinction, and human activity threatens more than 80% of East and Southeast Asia's wetlands. Every year, an estimated 400 people are killed by wildlife in India, with Maharashtra alone seeing 88 human deaths and 9258 cattle killings by tigers in 2020. The ECO-Guard is an intelligent device which uses the You Only Look Once (YOLO) model and various sensors and machine learning models with algorithms that support and promote forest monitoring and tourist guidance in forest areas addressing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 (Life on Land). The paper presents a linear chain-like mesh of devices speeded across bio-area which are used in correlation for intended surveillance. Each device can multimodule apps and tally their sightings automatically to analyze coherence of the situation with the forest rangers, organizations, and figures. It catches from the information, the ill substitutes like human spotting with beasts. It suggests that the advice can be further put into practice by constantly monitoring any closeness of alternatives that match to create an unfavorable combination. Also having to help detect many forest crimes, some including illegal logging, preventing, and deforestation on a large scale. This paper highlights a novel ECO-Guard, an intelligent and autonomous monitoring system which includes artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced strategies and algorithms to conserve wildlife and forest ecosystems by integrating various hardware and software components.