Drones will be used to collect encroachment status and prepare a database (Representational)Gurugram:  In view of protecting wildlife of the Aravalli ranges from encroachers, the Haryana government has come up with a plan of a drone survey of the mountains so that any non-forestry activity can be prevented.

"The basic challenges for government agencies are to keep original status of forest areas and numbers of wildlife animals.

So far, the forest department has no such tools to declare new encroachments consider to be non-forestry activities," Rao Narbir Singh, state forest and wildlife minister, said."And to compete with these challenges, the Haryana government has come up with a surveillance plan for protection of forest and wildlife ecosystem in the Aravalli range of Gurgaon and Faridabad districts, he said.He said that the state government was going to do a drone survey of the Aravalli mountains to collect encroachment status and prepare a database.The drones will be equipped with photo and video cameras to ensure present status or the area and in case of any non-forestry violations, we will match the areas with our database to find offence, Mr Singh said.The minister also said that drones will help in combing areas from illegal wildlife and forestry area, poaching of animals and other forestry activities.