Roberto Santana single-handedly hefted a 25-pound hoedad above his head before plunging it deep into the sandy soil, then quickly bent down and with his other hand placed a sagebrush seedling into the fresh hole.

Without losing momentum, Santana stepped forward, his foot firmly compacting the earth around the spindly plant. A half-dozen steps later, he did it again, as he continued hour after hour while carrying a bag on his back stuffed with hundreds of the tiny plants.

By day's end, Santana planted 1,200 of those seedlings in the open spaces of the Hanford Reach a few miles north and east of Vernita Bridge.

It is hard work in a place known for freezing December temperatures and cutting winds, but work that needs to be done.

"It builds muscles," said Santana, when asked how he felt after hoisting the hoedad 1,200 times in a day - the equivalent of lifting 15 tons with one arm.

The shrub-steppe landscape is home to coyotes, mule deer, badgers, a variety of birds and borrowing rodents. Sagebrush provides those species needed shelter, shade and cover.

Two summers ago, a wildfire destroyed virtually all the sagebrush and native grasses on this land, making it hard for even the desert-adapted species to survive.

But this winter, Santana and others like him are replacing the lost vegetation by hand-planting sagebrush, which is vital to the desert's ecosystem.

Santana is one of 10 men on a crew who were shoving the seedlings into the soil Monday. They are one of several crews hired on contract by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help in the project to stabilize and rehabilitate areas that were burned in 2005 and this year on the Hanford Reach National Monument.

Dan Haas, a natural resource planner with Fish and Wildlife's Hanford Reach Monument office in Richland, said the sage is important for sage thrush, sage sparrows and sage lizards. Mice and voles depend on the native grasses and sagebrush seeds for food, then become meals for birds of prey and coyotes.

Haas said when fire destroys the sagebrush, it can take decades or a century for the brush to come back on its own. "It doesn't germinate after fires, and when it does germinate it is successful one out of seven years," he said.

The best way to restore sagebrush habitat is to harvest seeds and have a nursery germinate and grow seedlings for replanting, Haas said.

The planting south of Saddle Mountain along Highway 24 began six days ago, said Jenny Meisel, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service based in Richland.

Boxes containing 700 plants each were opened at the planting sites and the small clusters of seedlings were dipped in a moisture-enhancing gel containing nutrients that will improve survival odds, Haas said.

While December can have disagreeable weather for the planting crews, it is the best time for seedlings because the ground is cool, the soil penetrable and moisture abundant, Haas said.

Bringing back sagebrush, along with native grasses such as Indian rice grass, thick spike wheat grass and sand dropseed, will enrich the ecosystem for its inhabitants, said Meisel, who was overseeing Monday's plantings.

Santana's crew, which is from a forestry contractor called Pacific Oasis from Ashland, Ore., expected to plant about 13,000 seedlings Monday. The total effort involving several other crews working on other burned sites in the monument this month will see more than 650,000 seedlings planted, said Jacob Gear, a Fish and Wildlife Service employee from Lakeview, Ore., who was helping with the Hanford restoration effort.

Gear said approximately 3,000 acres are targeted for sagebrush planting by year's end. In addition to paid contractors like those from Pacific Oasis, the replanting effort is being done by volunteers from the Native Plant Society and Audubon Society, he said.

Eliseo Nava, crew leader for Santana's group, said each planter has a sack on his back that can carry 350 seedlings as he steps across the desert, poking a plant at 15-foot intervals. The 10 men expected to cover the 60-acre plot in one day.

Meisel said once the burned areas are revegetated with sage and native grasses, meadowlarks, horned larks, kestrels, badgers and other desert species will be able to thrive.

The replanting effort also includes antelope bitterbrush, spiny hopsage, rubber rabbitbrush, yellow rabbitbrush and black greasewood. The Fish and Wildlife Service also plans to plant 45,500 native riparian species along the waterways, including willows, cottonwoods, currants, rose and elderberry.

Areas targeted for the restoration efforts include lands burned this summer that were known as the Overlook, Wautoma and MilePost fires that blacked 98,582 acres. Also involved are 77,147 acres that burned on the monument.

The Department of Energy also is sowing $3.1 million worth of seeds on the 9,500 acres that burned on the Hanford nuclear reservation in August.

It has purchased 200,000 pounds of a blend of native grass seed and is using large spreaders pulled by tractors to plant the seed. The work began in early October and should finish by year's end.

Because of heavy demand for seed after last year's busy fire season in the west, DOE contractor Fluor Hanford moved quickly to buy the seed, said Geoff Tyree, company spokesman. Some of the seed came from stock collected on Hanford.

Next year, sagebrush and bitterbrush will be planted in 10-by-10-foot groupings in the burned area. Fluor Hanford estimates the project will require 180,000 to 250,000 plants at a cost of $931,000. The tribes will provide about a 10th of the plants.

DOE's goal with the replanting is to restore the natural environment, suppress blowing dirt that can be hazardous to workers and improve fire safety by using native plants. Invasive plants such as cheat grass burn hotter and more quickly than native grass and brush.