Nevada Lithium Mining Approved Despite Potential Damage to Endangered Wildflowers

For the first time under Joe Biden, a federal permit for a new lithium mine has been approved for a Nevada project needed for his clean energy agenda, though conservationists have vowed to sue the plan, which they say would drive an endangered wildflower to extinction. will go .

Eonair Ltd.'s mine will help accelerate production of a key mineral that makes electric car batteries at the center of the president's push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, administration officials said Thursday in Reno.

Acting Deputy Home Secretary Laura Daniel-Davies said it was “essential to advancing the clean energy transition and powering the economy of the future”.

“The process we've undertaken demonstrates that we can develop responsible critical minerals here in the United States while protecting the health of our public lands and resources,” he said.

In the works for six years, the Rhyolite Ridge mine in the high desert between Reno and Las Vegas should begin construction next year, Australia-based Ioneer said.

The mine is scheduled to begin production in 2028, producing enough lithium to power 370,000 cars annually for more than two decades, officials said. Global lithium demand is projected to grow sixfold by 2030 compared to 2020.

“I can say with absolute confidence that there are few deposits in the world as impressive as Rhyolite Ridge,” Ioneer executive chairperson James Callaway said Thursday.

“Today's approval of Ioneer's federal permit is the culmination of countless hours of work and a testament to our extraordinary team's dedication to the development and construction of one of the nation's most sustainable mining projects,” he said.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), in consultation with the Bureau as required under the Endangered Species Act, granted the permit from the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management on the condition that the mine would not endanger the survival of Tihm's buckwheat.

The service added the 6-inch-tall (15 cm tall) wildflower with yellow and cream-colored flowers to the US Endangered Species List on 14 December 2022, citing mining as the greatest threat to its survival.

Five days later the bureau began the mining permit process. The companies say subsequent changes to Ionair's mining footprint have eased concerns about potential damage to the blooms.

Environmentalists on Thursday said the final approval of the mine violates several politically motivated U.S. laws. The Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement: “Litigation is now the only option [to] Shut down the Rhyolite Ridge mine.”

“Lithium is needed for our energy transition, but it can't come with an extinction price tag,” said Patrick Donnelly, the center's Great Basin director. He said Biden's administration is “abandoning its responsibility to protect endangered species like the tehmer's buckwheat and making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act”.

Fewer than 30,000 of the plants remain in Nevada alone, where they cover eight subpopulations that cover an area of ​​10 acres (4 hectares)—roughly the size of eight football fields.

The USFWS said the project, including infrastructure and waste rock dumps, would come within 15 feet (5 m) of buckwheat and cause the loss of some of its designated critical habitat, which is home to neighboring bees and other pollinators integral to its reproduction.

But the service said the operation would cause no direct disruption to individual plants and that the restoration, mitigation and monitoring promised in the blueprint should provide the protections needed to coexist with open-pit mining deeper than the length of a football field.

Opponents of the project say it's the latest example of the Biden administration's roughshod over US protections for native wildlife, rare species and sacred tribal lands in the name of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and easing the climate crisis, and strengthening national security by easing dependence on foreign sources of vital minerals.

“We've been fighting to save Tiehm's Buckwheat for six years and we're not giving up now,” Donnelly said.

Nevada is home to the only existing lithium mine in the United States. Another is currently under construction near the Oregon line, 220 miles (354 km) north of Reno. That Lithium America mine in Thacker Pass, which was approved in the final days of Donald Trump's administration, survived numerous legal challenges from environmentalists and Native American tribes who said it would destroy lands they consider sacred where their ancestors were killed by US troops in 1865.