By james art 
Conservationists and a Native American tribe are suing the U.S. to try to block a lithium mine in Nevada that they say will drive an endangered desert wildflower to extinction, disrupt groundwater flows and threaten cultural resources.
The Center for Biological Diversity pledged the legal battle a week ago when the U.S. Department of the Interior approved Ioneer Ltd.’s Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron mine. in the only place where Tiehm’s buckwheat is known to exist in the world, near the California line midway between Reno and Las Vegas.
It is the latest in a series of legal battles over projects that President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing under his clean energy agenda, designed to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, in part by increasing lithium production to make batteries for electric vehicles and solar panels.
The new lawsuit says the Interior Department’s approval of the mine marks a dramatic reversal from U.S. wildlife experts who warned nearly two years ago that Tiehm’s buckwheat was “endangered now” when they listed it as an endangered species in December 2022
“One cannot save the planet from climate change while destroying biodiversity,” said Fermina Stevens, director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, who joined the center in the lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Reno.
“The use of minerals, whether for electric cars or solar panels, does not justify this disregard for local cultural areas and key environmental laws,” said John Hader, director of Great Basin Resource Watch, another co-plaintiff.
Rita Henderson, spokeswoman for the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in Reno, said Friday the agency had no immediate comment.
Ioneer Vice President Chad Yeftich said the Australia-based mining company intends to intervene on behalf of the US and “vigorously defend” the project’s approval, “which is based on its careful and thorough permitting process.”
“We are confident that the BLM will prevail,” Yeftich said. He added that he does not expect the lawsuit to delay plans to begin construction next year.
The lawsuit says the mine will harm sites sacred to the Western Shoshone people. This includes Cave Spring, a natural spring less than a mile away, described as “a place for intergenerational transmission of cultural and spiritual knowledge.”
But it focuses on alleged violations of the Endangered Species Act. It details the Fish and Wildlife Service’s departure from the dire picture it previously painted of threats to the 6-inch wildflower with cream or yellow flowers bordering the open-pit mine that Ioneer plans to mine.
The mine permit calls for up to a fifth of the nearly 3.6 square kilometers designated by the agency as critical habitat around the plants – home to a variety of pollinators important to their survival – to be lost in decades, some forever.
When proposing to protect 368 hectares of critical habitat, the service said “this unit is essential to the conservation and recovery of Tiehm’s buckwheat.” The agency formalized the designation when it listed the plant in December 2022, rejecting the alternative of less stringent endangered status.
“We believe that endangered species status is not appropriate because threats are serious and imminent, and Tiehm’s buckwheat is threatened with extinction now, as opposed to likely to become endangered in the future,” the agency concluded.
The lawsuit also revealed for the first time that the plant’s population, numbering fewer than 30,000 according to the latest government estimate, has suffered additional losses since August that were not accounted for in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological advisory. .
The damage is similar to what the Bureau concluded was caused by rodents eating the plants in a 2020 incident that reduced the population by as much as 60 percent, the lawsuit said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service said in its August biological opinion that while the project “will result in the long-term disturbance (approximately 23 years) of 146 acres (59 hectares) of plant community … and the permanent loss of 45 acres (18 hectares), we do not expect adverse effects to significantly reduce the value of critical habitat as a whole.”