The US is promoting a review of Nevada’s lithium mine over concerns about endangered wildflowers

RENO, Nev. – The Biden administration has taken a major step in its accelerated environmental review of what could become the third lithium mine in the U.S., amid expected legal challenges from conservationists over the threat they say they pose to an endangered wildflower in Nevada.

The Bureau of Land Management last week released more than 2,000 pages of documents in a draft environmental impact statement for the Rhyolite Ridge mine. Lithium is a metal key to producing batteries for electric vehicles — a centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s “green energy” agenda.

Officials from the agency and Interior’s parent company trumpeted the news, saying progress on the review of the lithium boron mine project “represents another step by the Biden-Harris administration to support responsible, domestic development of critical minerals to power the clean world. energy economics.”

“Federal agencies working together to solve problems efficiently while protecting vulnerable species and other irreplaceable resources is exactly how we need to move forward as we begin to produce these critical minerals in the United States,” said Steve Feldgus, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of the Interior for land and mineral management.

Environmentalists vowing to fight the mine say this is the latest example of the administration trampling America’s protections of native wildlife and rare species in the name of slowing climate change by reducing dependence on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, described it as “greenwashing extinction.” The nonprofit conservation group first petitioned in 2019 for federal protection of the rare flower, Tiehm’s buckwheat, which grows near the California border.

“We believe the current conservation plan would violate the Endangered Species Act, so if the BLM approves it as proposed, we will almost certainly challenge it,” he told The Associated Press last week.

Nevada is home to the only existing lithium mine in the US and another is currently under construction near the Oregon line, 220 miles north of Reno. By 2030, global demand for lithium is expected to be six times greater than in 2020.

The agency said it published the draft assessment and offered public comment on the new mine through June 3, after Ioneer Ltd., the Australian mining company that has been planning to dig for lithium at the site for years, released its latest Blueprint has been adjusted to reduce the destruction of critical mines. habitat for the plant, which does not exist anywhere else in the world.

Ioneer chief executive Bernard Rowe said lithium production could start as early as 2027. He said the company spent six years adjusting its plans to allow the mine to continue operating next to the plant, invested $2.5 million in conservation efforts and committed another $1. million per year to ensure that the plant and surrounding habitat are protected.

“Rhyolite Ridge will help accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and secure a cleaner future for our children and grandchildren,” said James Calaway, executive chairman of Ioneer.

As well as reducing encroachment on the 15cm tall wildflower with yellow and cream colored blooms, the strategy also includes a controversial propagation plan to grow and transplant flowers nearby – something conservationists say won’t work. .

The plant grows in eight subpopulations that together cover about 4 hectares – an area equivalent to the size of about eight football fields. They are located halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, in a kind of desert oasis for the plants and the insects that pollinate them.

The Fish and Wildlife Service added the flower to the US endangered species list on December 14, 2022, citing mining as the biggest threat to its survival.

Less than a week later, the government published a formal statement of intent to begin work on the draft environmental impact report. Three weeks after that, the Energy Department announced a $700 million conditional loan to Ioneer for the mining project that the department said could produce enough lithium to support the production of about 370,000 electric vehicles per year for four decades.

The Center for Biological Diversity said a series of internal documents it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Bureau of Land Management show the government rushed its review of the mine.

Scott Distell, the BLM project manager in charge of the review, expressed concerns about the accelerated schedule in an email to his district boss when it was suddenly accelerated in December 2023.

“This is a very aggressive schedule that differs from other project schedules for similar projects recently completed,” Distell wrote in the Dec. 22 email.

The draft environmental impact statement sets out three different options for the project, including a ‘no action alternative’, which would mean no mine would be built. The one the agency said it favors expects that Ioneer’s conservation plan would allow for the immediate destruction of about 22% of the plant’s habitat in the 368 acres that the Fish and Wildlife Service designated as critical habitat when it was classified as endangered. That’s down from the estimated 38% in an earlier version of the plan.

“For an extremely rare species confined to such a small area, no destruction of its critical habitat is acceptable,” said Naomi Fraga, conservation director at the California Botanic Garden.

Donnelly points to the Endangered Species Act’s requirement that federal agencies consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service whenever a project could affect an endangered or threatened species, to ensure that it will not “result in the destruction or adverse modification of designated critical habitat.”

“Reducing habitat destruction of this rare plant from 38% to 22% is like cutting off one leg instead of both,” says Donnelly. “They are still dealing a fatal blow to this precious, rare wildflower.”