Old documents fuel latest bid to halt Nevada lithium mine

RENO, Nev. (AP) — 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 more than two 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.

The scientist the plant is named after — Arnold Tiehm, pronounced like a sports "team” — first suggested in 1994 the site be declared a special botanical area and made off-limits to mining.

A year later, the supervisory botanist for the Nevada agency now considering state protection for the plant recommended the Bureau of Land Management designate it an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. And in 1998, the bureau listed it among those nominated for such designation.

Today, the Nevada site remains the only place on earth the plant is known to exist. The Center for Biological Diversity says Australia-based Ioneer's proposed lithium mine about 200 miles (320 kilometers) 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....