State Tries To Protect Plant

The Forest Service is erecting barricades to keep off-road vehicles from tearing up 200 acres atop Mt. Harrison in southern Idaho that apparently offers the only habitat for Christ’s Indian paintbrush.

District Ranger Pete Peterson believes they pose the biggest threat in the campaign to head off listing the flowering yellow-orange perennial under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Officials estimate there are about 10,000 individual plants in the subalpine terrain at the top of the mountain, but they have yet to determine whether the number is on the rise.