Over 70,000 new trees have been planted in Narrow Hills Provincial Park after the destructive Shoe Fire ripped through the area in May. The park, about 130 kilometres northeast of Prince Albert, Sask., is home to Gem Lakes and Lost Echo campgrounds, which remained closed for the season due to the wildfire. “There was a lot of enthusiasm to get the new life going back in the forest,” Pat MacKasey, a provincial park forest ecologist. MacKasey has been the supervisor of a five-person crew who have planted 73,080 Jack pine and white spruce trees since July. Trees have been planted in an area in Pine Lake that had previously been wiped out by a windstorm in the 1990s, he said. MacKasey says regrowth after that storm was slow, but new trees were eventually planted again in 2002 once forest health improved.