Mine fight pits plant, new car batteries
RENO, Nev. – The rare Tiehm’s buckwheat stands less than a foot tall in Nevada’s rocky high desert, its thin, leafless stems adorned with tiny yellow flowers in spring.
To the Australian company that wants to mine lithium beneath the federal land where it grows, the perennial herb is a potential roadblock to a metal badly needed for electric vehicles and the global push to reduce greenhouse gases.
To environmentalists determined to halt the open pit mine, it’s a precious species that exists nowhere else in the world.
And to plant ecologists, it’s a scientific challenge to try to grow the wildflower from seeds in a greenhouse.
Whose mission is a nobler shade of green depends on who you ask.
The competing interests appeared to find some common ground earlier this year at the remote site about 200 miles southeast of Reno. Ioneer Ltd. has spent millions exploring the site, which it says is one of the world’s biggest undeveloped lithium-boron deposits.
But the Center for Biological Diversity withdrew its lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in January after Ioneer ended its exploration activities and agreed to provide the group notice before resuming any work at Rhyolite Ridge in rural Esmeralda County.
Still, Ioneer remains committed to the mine it says is expected to produce 22,000 tons of lithium carbonate needed for electric car batteries like the ones Tesla makes east of Reno, create 400 to 500 construction jobs and 300 to 400 operational jobs.
And environmentalists insist the legal battle is just beginning.
“The storm is brewing on the horizon,” said Patrick Donnelly, Nevada director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering the center’s petition, filed in October, to add the flower to the federal list of endangered species. And the Nevada Division of Forestry announced it would soon start gathering public comments to help determine whether to take its own action to protect the plant.
“If you look at a map of the lithium deposits and a map of the buckwheat, there’s really no way to build the mine without wiping out the buckwheat,” Donnelly said. “We fully anticipate a fight for many years to come.”
The slow-growing flowers have fragile roots that dry out easily and make up 70% of the plant.
“We know they are very tolerant of horrible soil. That’s unusual,” Leger said. “What we don’t know is how it will grow in other kinds of soil.”
Leger, who also serves as director of UNR’s Museum of Natural History, said those who dismiss the flowers as weeds unworthy of all the fuss don’t understand the value of biodiversity.
“Weed is a human construct. A weed is a plant that grows anywhere a human doesn’t want it,” she said, adding biodiversity is “magic” and a safeguard against future loss.
Donnelly said the new research appears to be aimed at finding an alternative site “to keep the species alive so Ioneer could destroy its habitat.”