Rare Nevada plant at risk in mine fight

Activists out to save Tiehm’s buckwheat

RENO — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says there’s enough scientific evidence that two rare plants in Nevada’s desert could go extinct to warrant a year-long review of whether to list them as endangered species, including one at the center of a fight over a proposed lithium mine.

Tiehm’s buckwheat, which is found on just 10 acres of federal land in west-central Nevada and believed to exist nowhere else in the world, could be wiped out by the lithium mine proposed 200 miles southeast of Reno, according to conservationists who petitioned for both listings.

The Las Vegas bearpoppy is facing threats from dramatic habitat loss in Southern Nevada due to urban sprawl and mining, as well as killer bees, they said.

The service said in a formal 90-day finding published in the Federal Register on Wednesday that the petitioners presented “substantial scientific or commercial information” that listings of both plants may be warranted.

It agreed the buckwheat is potentially threatened by destruction of habitat from mining, as well as invasive species, off-road vehicles, wildfires, livestock grazing and climate change.

The bearpoppy is threatened by urbanization, mining, recreation, climate change and the invasive bees, the agency said.

Existing regulatory mechanisms may be inadequate to address impacts of the threats, the agency concluded in the ruling cheered by environmentalists.

Ioneer Ltd, the Australian-based company that wants to build the mine, has spent millions exploring the site it says is one of the world’s biggest undeveloped lithium-boron deposits critical to making batteries for electric cars.

The company acknowledges Tiehm’s buckwheat hasn’t been documented anywhere else on earth, but denies the mine would lead to its extinction.

Nearly 100 environmental scientists and university professors, mostly from Nevada and California, disagreed in a letter earlier this week to state officials.

Scott Sonner The Associated Press A plant ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, points to a tiny Tiehm’s buckwheat that has sprouted at a greenhouse on the Northern Nevada campus.