Combating Illegal Logging & Fire Risks: Forest Vigilance using IoT
Kavita Narendrabhai Parmar, Tejal Patel, Pragyan Nanda · 2025
This study presents the creation of a cutting-edge Internet of Things (IoT)-based forest monitoring system designed to tackle the pressing problems of illicit logging and forest fires, which continue to be major ecological and environmental hazards. In remote and large forest areas, where manual patrolling and permanent surveillance systems are impractical and ineffective, traditional techniques of forest monitoring frequently fall short. The system of interest is an upcoming IoT technology-based system that has various sensors such as a GPS module for location tracking, an MQ-2 gas sensor to detect harmful gases such as smoke, methane, and carbon monoxide, a flame sensor to detect fire in real time, and a voice recognition module which using CNN to detect voice-operated communication. The ESP32/ESP8266 microcontroller is the central piece of the system that collects data from all sensors and wirelessly sends it to a cloud platform for continuous monitoring, data processing, and message sending. As soon as illegal operations are recognized, such as logging or burning, the system sends a message and computes its exact position so that the problem can be tackled quickly without any harm caused. The voice recognition component enhances the system's application in the field through remote, hands-free access to forest personnel. The design, deployment, and scalability of the system in forest conservation efforts are emphasized in this paper, which also demonstrates how IoT technologies can offer an automated, real-time, and cost-effective means to enhance the monitoring, detection, and management of forest resources, which will eventually accelerate response times and assist in maintaining natural ecosystems.