Punjab's Forest Department claims to have reclaimed 1,984.62 acres of forest land, estimated at Rs9.008 billion, from encroachment and unlawful occupation over the past two years, official reports reveal. During the same period, the department says more than 50 million trees were planted across 50,869 acres under its forest restoration programme. The figures emerge from two departmental dossiers detailing an extensive drive involving land retrieval, plantation, satellite monitoring, digital forest inventories, artificial-intelligence-based surveillance, fire detection and legal reforms. The Southern Zone accounts for 1,500.43 acres, or 75.6% of the recovered land, followed by the Central Zone with 421.11 acres and the Northern Zone with 63.08 acres.
The dossier categorises the recovered land as 953.98 acres under Kacha/Pacca structures, 657.85 acres under cultivation, 364.79 acres under litigation and eight acres associated with another government department. Among the largest recoveries were 797 acres at Lal Suhanra, 486 acres in Muzaffargarh, 168 acres in Sialkot, 152.20 acres in Multan and 129 acres in Sheikhupura/Nankana. Recoveries were also reported from Faisalabad, Layyah, Murree, Rajanpur, Bhakkar, Attock and other forest divisions. The official document records recovery activity across three financial periods: 757.69 acres in 2024-25, 1,041.81 acres in 2025-26 and 185.13 acres during 2026-27 up to July 2026.
Alongside the land-retrieval campaign, the department says it has shifted from conventional tree-counting towards landscape restoration, with plantations covering 50,869 acres. More than 50 million trees were planted during 2024-26, including a claimed record of 40 million trees during 2025-26, through block, linear, canalside, railway-side, peri-urban and urban plantations. The department has also embarked on large-scale digital mapping. A digital forest inventory covering 810,000 acres has been developed using high-resolution spatial data, while more than 33.74 million trees have been geo-tagged.
The department says nine in-house digital dashboards are being used for real-time forest operations and monitoring. Satellite imagery and digital mapping are being used to identify land-cover changes, encroachment, illegal logging and forest fires. Punjab has also established what the dossier describes as the country's first GIS Mobile Lab, equipped for field mapping, GPS-based data collection, drone operations and real-time processing and validation. Fire prevention has emerged as another major component, with Murree and Kahuta recording major drops in fire incidents through advanced thermal sensors and drone surveillance.