WOODLAND PARK, Colo. -- Nearly five years after Colorado suffered through the Hayman Fire that burned 140,000 acres, life is slowly returning to the burn area with the help of the Forest Service, which is planting new trees.

Contract workers from California headed up the hills of Pike Forest on Wednesday with some of the 137,000 seedlings that will be planted over the next two weeks.

The Forest Service is focusing on an area west of the town of West Creek with the hope that at least two-thirds of the seedlings will survive.

This the fourth spring in a row that the Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir Tree seedlings have been planted in an effort to replace the ones that were scotched in the Hayman Fire.

"If you look at the way the large fires have been over the last couple of years, if these continue to go, there won't be much forest left, " said forest restoration worker Bob Post. "So it's really important when you start taking care of these large areas that have burned that you start putting some sort of seed source or seedlings back on these sites."

It would take centuries for the burned forest to grow back naturally were it not for the planting project.

"So we aren't having huge, treeless gaps within the landscape over 300 years," said restoration forester Chris Kuennen. "We're trying to quicken that up."

One thousand acres will be planted this year but those involved know not to expect immediate results.

"The sad thing is I won't be around to see what it looks like in 100 years," Post said. "Because it will take 100 years for these trees to get to a certain size to produce seed."

Those seeds will help to further the growth of the forest in a compounding effect.

The Forest Service hopes to replant 10 percent of the 140,000 acres that burned.

The National Arbor Foundation helped pay for the project that they said will hopefully continue for several years to come.

The seeds themselves were taken from Colorado to a nursery in Nebraska. They were returned to Colorado when they were 9 months old and are now being planted in the area where they originated.