Nearly 140,000 ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir seedlings are slated to be planted on 121 acres of the Hayman burn area in early April.

The U.S. Forest Service will again plant year-old evergreens in the area in which 137,000 acres burned in 2002, consuming 133 homes and causing $38 million in damages.

Forest Service spokeswoman Barbara Timock said in a release that the project covers 121 acres in the Box Creek area. She said the purpose of the planting is to restore trees on lands stripped during the mining days of the 1800’s. The area is currently dominated by lodgepole pine, so these additional trees will add variety.

Funding is from the National Arbor Day Foundation’s members and corporate partners. Each acre of tree planting costs approximately $600.

Timock explained that cones were collected in 2003 for use in Lake County and 2005 for Teller County planting. After being extracted, they then were grown at the Charles E. Bessey Nursery in Halsey, Neb., a company that serves the National Forest system as well as other public agencies and Native American tribes.

Now the seedlings are ready to be planted by contract planting crews from California. Each worker is capable of planting three to four acres per day depending on the ground conditions, and they should be finished in about two weeks.

Because the seeds were gathered and planted in the same geographic location, it’s believed they will have an improved survival rate.

The soil conditions in the Hayman burn are decomposed granite and dry out quickly from the porous conditions. For this reason, planting needs to take place as soon as the snow melts to ensure moisture and seedling survival.