U.S. advances Nevada lithium mine review amid concerns about endangered wildflowers

RENO, Nev. (AP) The Biden administration has taken a major step toward expediting environmental review of what could be a third U.S. lithium mine, with conservationists expected to raise concerns over what they say is a critical threat to endangered species. Legal challenge to threat posed by Nevada wildflowers.

Last week, the Bureau of Land Management released more than 2,000 pages of documents from the Rhyolite Ridge mine’s draft environmental impact report. Lithium is a key metal in making electric vehicle batteries and is central to President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda.

Officials at the agency and its parent Interior Department trumpeted the news, saying the progress on the review of the lithium-boron project represents another step for the Biden-Harris administration to support responsible domestic development of critical minerals for clean energy. Power economy.

“If we are to produce these critical minerals in the United States, federal agencies must work together to effectively address the problem while protecting vulnerable species and other irreplaceable resources.

Environmentalists vowing to crack down on the mine say it is the latest example of the government running roughshod over U.S. protections for native wildlife and rare species in the name of reducing reliance on fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to slow climate change.

Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director of the Center for Biological Diversity, describes it as “greenwashing extinction.” The nonprofit conservation group first petitioned the federal government in 2019 to protect the Tiehms buckwheat, a rare flower that grows near the California border.

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

Nevada has the only existing lithium mine in the United States, with another currently under construction near the Oregon Line, 220 miles (354 kilometers) north of Reno. By 2030, global lithium demand is expected to grow six times compared to 2020.

The bureau said it released a draft review and had until June 3 to review the new mine after Australian miner Ioneer Ltd., which has planned to mine lithium at the site for years, adjusted its latest blueprint to reduce damage to the critical resource. Open for comment.

Ioneers managing director Bernard Rowe said lithium production could begin as soon as 2027. to conservation efforts and has pledged an additional $1 million per year to ensure plants and their surrounding habitats are protected.

Ioneer executive chairman James Calaway said Rhyolite Ridge will help accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and ensure a cleaner future for generations to come.

In addition to reducing encroachment on the 6-inch-tall (15-centimeter-tall) wildflowers with yellow and beige flowers, the strategy includes a controversial propagation program that involves planting and transplanting flowers where conservationists say they won’t work. .

The plant grows in eight subpopulations, totaling about 10 acres (4 hectares), an area equivalent to about eight football fields. They are located in a high desert oasis between Reno and Las Vegas, perfect for the plants and the insects that pollinate them.

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

Less than a week later, the government issued a formal notice of intent to begin work on a draft environmental impact statement. Three weeks later, the Energy Department announced a $700 million conditional loan to Ioneer for the mining project, which it said could produce enough lithium to support the production of about 370,000 electric vehicles per year for 40 years.

The Center for Biological Diversity said a series of internal documents obtained from the Bureau of Land Management under a Freedom of Information Act request showed the government had rushed to review the mine.

Scott Distell, the BLM project manager in charge of the review, expressed concern in an email to district directors about the accelerated schedule, which was suddenly accelerated to December 2023.

Distell wrote in a Dec. 22 email that this is a very aggressive timeline and differs from other project timelines for similar projects that have been completed recently.

The draft environmental impact statement lays out three different options for the project, including a no-action alternative, which would mean no mine would be built. The service said it prefers to anticipate that the Ioneers conservation plan would allow for the direct destruction of about 22% of the plant’s habitat within the 910 acres (368 hectares) that the Fish and Wildlife Service designated when it listed it as endangered. for critical habitat. This is down from the 38% estimated in an earlier version of the plan.

Naomi Fraga, director of conservation at the California Botanic Gardens, said that for an extremely rare species restricted to such a small area, any damage to its important habitat is unacceptable.

Donnelly noted that the Endangered Species Act requires federal agencies to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service when plans may affect threatened or endangered species to ensure that they will not result in the destruction or adverse modification of designated critical habitat.

Donnelly said reducing the destruction of the rare plant’s habitat from 38 percent to 22 percent was like chopping off one leg instead of two. They are still dealing a fatal blow to this precious and rare wildflower.