Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Old documents fuel newest bid to prevent lithium mine
RENO, Nev. — Few people had ever heard of Tiehm’s buckwheat when conservationists filed a petition two years ago to list the desert wildflower as an endangered species.
But federal documents reviewed by The Associated Press show the rare plant at the center of a fight over a proposed lithium mine in Nevada has been on the government’s radar for decades.
Conservationists who discovered the records are urging the Bureau of Land Management to take administrative action to create a mile-buffer around the flower while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers formal protection under the Endangered Species Act.
“BLM recognized that the habitat of Tiehm’s buckwheat needed to be protected 23 years ago,” said Naomi Fraga, the California Botanic Garden conservation director who filed the original federal listing petition in 2019.
Today, the Nevada site is the only place on earth the plant is known to exist. The Center for Biological Diversity says Australia-based Ioneer’s proposed lithium mine some 200 miles northwest of Las Vegas would destroy it.
“Management under BLM’s default ‘multiple-use policy’ has utterly failed to adequately protect Tiehm’s buckwheat or its habitat,” the center said in its March 29 petition seeking the designation. “Tiehm’s buckwheat is staring down the barrel of extinction.”
USFWS initiated a formal 12-month review of the plant last July with a listing decision due this summer.
The flower was discovered at Rhyolite Ridge in 1983 and named a new species in 1985.
Rhyolite Ridge was among seven Areas of Critical Environmental Concern the bureau proposed in its 1994 draft environmental impact statement for the Tonopah district’s Resource Management Plan.
Documents indicate the agency dropped all seven from its final decision in 1997 due to opposition from local counties, but listed it again in a 1998 Federal Register notice seeking additional nominations.
Patrick Donnelly, the center’s Nevada director, found it on the notice’s brief description of 43 locations already nominated, including, at Rhyolite Ridge, an “uncommon plant.”
“We’d been kicking around the idea of proposing ACEC designation for the Tiehm’s buckwheat habitat for awhile, but finding this ancient evidence of neglect by BLM was all the impetus we needed,” Donnelly said.
Bureau spokesman Jess Harvey said Thursday the agency would consider such a proposal the next time it develops amendments to the district resource management plan, but none currently is planned.
Ioneer declined comment but said it expects final approval of the mine before the end of the year. Last month, it completed an $80 million stock sale to public investors in a capital-raising effort led by Goldman Sachs that Ioneer’s managing director Bernard Rowe said will allow it to speed up development of the mine.