SHOSHONE - The largest ever fire rehabilitation effort in southern Idaho is under way, a Herculean project to nurse desert scorched by summer wildland fires back to life.

Officials in the Twin Falls District of the Bureau of Land Management have secured 1.2 million pounds of seed following a national fire season so voracious, many feared there wouldn't be enough to go around. Now crews are racing to plant the seeds before winter sets in.

"The logistics of fire rehab are mind-boggling," said Scott Uhrig, a BLM supervisor overseeing the rehab.

A seven-person crew has scrambled from sun-up to sundown to mix seed varieties - about 80 percent of them native to Idaho - at a warehouse in Shoshone for the past two weeks.

They won't stop until Thanksgiving.

Teams of archeologists sweep the blackened desert for cultural artifacts that may have been exposed during the blazes.

Behind them are nearly 100 seed-planting "drills," which comb scorched earth from Shoshone to the Nevada border, dropping the tiny seeds into upturned soil. The contracted planters don't have time to go home at night - many sleep in makeshift camps miles into the desert.

Seed driller Eric Barney, a 21-year-old from west of Magic Reservoir, stops his ancient tractor to gauge his progress a few miles outside of Shoshone, the site of the Red Bridge Fire that threatened to consume the town. He points out a few tiny white specks on the horizon: the camp where he'll rest tonight with his father, another driller.

"I'm in this tractor 10 hours a day, at least," he said. "It gets a bit tedious by the end of the day."

Barney takes the moment to scan the seemingly endless desert-scape for rocks that could pierce his tractor's tires. At one point earlier this month, the father-son pair changed five punctured tires a day.

Contractors such as Barney earn about $7 per acre they plant. They'll cover 40 acres on a good day during their 70-day contract.

BLM officials said they hope to seed-drill about 128,000 acres in southern Idaho this fall - just a fraction of the nearly 600,000 BLM-managed acres that burned this summer. Mother Nature will take care of the rest, said Jennifer Mata, a BLM fire ecologist.

BLM scientists surveyed much of the burned land last year, and they are basing this year's seed mixtures on what previously grew.

This is the second year in a row the BLM has set district records for the number of rehab acres. Last year, the district rehabbed 90,000 acres.

The district secured about $10 million from the federal government late in the summer just for Murphy Complex rehab alone. That fire was Idaho's largest in a century.

The district has asked for another $16.2 million to rehab other burned areas, including more near Shoshone and Burley.

In addition to planting seed mixtures, the BLM is removing 12 miles of hazardous trees near Jarbidge, planting 1,600 shrubs and building 99 miles of fence in the Murphy effort.

It could begin planting sage brush in the next two weeks, though seed supplies are expected to run low. Hundreds of square miles of prime sage grouse habitat were destroyed in the Murphy fire.

The district could take as long as three years to finish the project, but for now seed planting is the priority as winter approaches, the ground freezes and the desert is blanketed by snow.

"We're in a hurry," Uhrig said. "It's seven-days-a-week, around-the-clock work."

Matt Christensen may be reached at 735-3243 and at matt.christensen@lee.net.