Gurgaon: Digital geofencing plan for the eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) of Sultanpur National Park (SNP) has finally entered the execution phase, with urban pressure — illegal constructions and encroachments — mounting around it.The move to digitise monitoring follows a steady pattern of violations reported around the park in recent years. This, officials said, would generate “time-stamped evidence of violations, strengthening legal and regulatory action”.No mobile towers within 3km, no new wood-based industries in the vicinity and no construction within 300 metres of the park — these are among the slew of measures being initiated for the park, officials said. The plan is to deploy cameras on all watch towers and launch drones across the sanctuary.Divisional wildlife officer (DWO) RK Jangra told TOI on Monday that the department plans to complete the project within this year. “We are seeking technical assistance in the matter,” he said, adding that preliminary groundwork has been completed and implementation is now the focus.The 5km eco-sensitive zone around Sultanpur Park has 22 villages. Mapping of the outermost ring has already begun. The rollout timeline of the alert system will be finalised within 15 days. Haryana Space Applications Centre will anchor the geospatial work and the alert dashboard will notify enforcement teams the moment a violation is detected.TOI previously reported the presence of banquet halls, ornate entrance gates and both commercial and residential structures coming up close to the park boundary. Once operational, the system — geofencing framework — is expected to automatically flag unauthorised activity, allowing quicker field-level intervention, they said.A committee, constituted by National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), last year in Sept flagged at least 78 instances of unauthorised construction within the eco-sensitive zone. In Dec last year alone, forest officials recorded 32 fresh violations. Officials have also flagged that over a dozen construction projects were underway within metres of the protected area, raising concerns over disturbance to the wetland’s hydrology and bird habitat.Forest department officials said the geofencing initiative is being positioned as a long-term solution to ensure sustained oversight of the park’s outer habitat as urbanisation intensifies.Environmentalists have repeatedly warned that continued construction pressure around Sultanpur could irreversibly damage one of the NCR’s most important bird habitats. Geofencing framework is intended to enable sharper, real-time monitoring of land-use changes and construction activity around the protected wetland, an area that has remained vulnerable to violations amid Gurgaon’s expanding urban footprint.The eco-sensitive zone around Sultanpur spans multiple villages and functions as a critical buffer for the park’s wetland and grassland ecosystem, which supports tens of thousands of migratory waterbirds every winter. Forest officials acknowledged that unclear boundary demarcation and reliance on manual monitoring have historically hampered enforcement efforts.Officials familiar with the geofencing plan said the technology is expected to address these enforcement gaps by creating a clearly defined digital boundary backed by satellite imagery and ground-verified data.
