The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) published its final rule listing Tiehm’s buckwheat as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. The Service is also designating 910 acres of critical habitat on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the Rhyolite Ridge area of the Silver Peak Range in Esmeralda County, Nevada, to help conserve the imperiled plant.

This is the area in which Australia-based ioneer is planning to develop its Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron mining project. (Earlier post.)

Tiehm’s buckwheat. Source: USFWS

The project is expected to come onstream in 2025. According to a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) completed in 2020, Ioneer will produce enough lithium carbonate to produce batteries for 400,000 EVs per year. Ioneer has already signed separate lithium offtake agreements with EcoPro Innovation, Ford Motor Company and PPES, the joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic.

The designated critical habitat is currently occupied by the plant’s single population. The critical habitat would not affect land ownership or establish a wildlife refuge, wilderness reserve, preserve or another conservation area. However, the listing will hold ioneer to a higher standard.

I’m thrilled that Tiehm’s buckwheat now has the protections it so desperately needs for survival. Lithium is an important part of our renewable energy transition, but it can’t come at the cost of extinction. The Service did the right thing by protecting this precious wildflower.

—Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity

For its part, ioneer “welcomed” the FWS announcement, saying that the decision provides further clarity for the path forward for the development of the Rhyolite Ridge project and was fully in line with Ioneer’s expectations.

FWS announced its intention to list Tiehm’s buckwheat in October 2021 and to designate critical habitat in February 2022. What was announced is in line with previous announcements including the area of critical habitat surrounding the plant populations, ioneer said.

The company said that the protection and conservation of Tiehm’s buckwheat is a key component in its environmental stewardship and is incorporated into all aspects of planning and permitting activities. In July 2022, the company submitted to the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) a revised Plan of Operations that incorporated additional key commitments relating to buckwheat conservation:

• Avoiding direct impacts to all Tiehm’s buckwheat populations;

• Minimizing and mitigating indirect impacts utilizing standard operating measures; and

• Minimizing disturbance within designated critical habitat.

Ioneer’s ongoing conservation efforts for Tiehm’s buckwheat are aimed at addressing current and future threats to the species, including climate-related threats.

(A significant amount of herbivory occurred in 2020, resulting in loss or damage to at least 50% of Tiehm’s buckwheat plants in the subpopulations, with two subpopulations suffering mortality of all plants, according to the FWS. FWS said then that it is not yet known if herbivory events like the one in 2020 occur periodically or if abnormally dry conditions made food and moisture sources scarcer for native small mammals in the area. Climate change could impact the frequency and severity of future herbivory events because future conditions will likely be warmer and drier.)

Under the supervision of a full-time botanist, ioneer is conducting scientific research to increase knowledge of the species and is now operating a dedicated greenhouse in Nevada where plants are being successfully grown from seed collected from the known populations.

Balancing resource extraction with survival of rare plants. The Tiehm’s buckwheat situation highlights the larger issue of the extraction of natural resources vs. localized environmental protection in the US SouthWest.

In an open access paper published in the journal Land, researchers from the Quinney College of Natural Resources proposing strategies so that an emerging demand for energy development projects—in this case, specifically oil and gas—and the survival of the Colorado Plateau’s rare plant populations don’t have to be mutually exclusive endeavors.

The Colorado Plateau and associated land tenures. Public ownership represents state and federal lands while private ownership represents local governments, NGOs, and tribal lands. Carrell et al.

The Colorado Plateau has abundant oil, gas, and alternative energy potential. This energy potential is scattered among a patchwork of land ownership, with private, tribal, and public lands being actively developed for energy extraction. Elements of biodiversity (e.g., listed and sensitive plant and animal species) are distributed among all land tenures, yet the laws protecting them can vary as a function of land tenure. It is imperative to understand the spatial distributions of threatened endangered, and sensitive species in relation to land tenure to preserve habitat and conserve species populations in areas undergoing energy development.

We developed species distribution models and spatial conservation optimization frameworks to explore the interactions among land ownership, existing and potential energy extraction, and biodiversity. Four management scenarios were tested to quantify how different approaches to energy extraction may impact rare plant distributions. Results show that incorporating risk and land tenure in spatially optimized frameworks it is possible to facilitate the long-term viability of rare plant species. The scenarios developed here represent a different attitude towards the value of rare plants and the risk of energy development. Results gives insight into the financial consequences of rare species protection and quantifies the biodiversity costs of energy development across landscapes.

—Carrell et al.

The team developed a new method to model how rare plants are distributed across the Colorado Plateau, one that includes strategies for structuring energy projects to optimize the use of space to minimize their impact. The model doesn’t work in an ecological vacuum—it considers factors like land ownership, potential for energy extraction at a site, and biodiversity.

The key to finding workable solutions in these kinds of circumstances is to think both like an ecologist and an energy developer, and to work within that space. Conservation planning frameworks don’t always incorporate real-world limiting factors such as financial considerations, business risk and land ownership. But those considerations are essential for finding workable solutions. Reality-based strategies require the consideration of all these things.

—Thomas Edwards, co-author

The key to this strategy is to use space wisely, Joshua Carrell, corresponding author, said. No solution can completely meet objectives for both plant conservation and energy extraction. But where there is direct conflict, the model can help land managers accommodate a level of balance, he said.

The team identified and mapped specific locations where conservation actions to protect plant communities would get the most bang for their buck. They found the minimum number of sites required to cover 30% of each species at the lowest financial cost to developers. By optimizing and minimizing the amount of land units slated for conservation, they were able to allow more areas open for energy development and exploration.

This approach might require developers to move planned roads, to build around certain protected areas, or drill horizontally in some places to protect a high-priority location, at some additional cost. But the model acknowledges that energy development in the area is headed toward the inevitable, and accommodates that.

It’s not a perfect scenario, but this approach provides opportunities for a best-case-scenario given the reality of circumstances.

—Thomas Edwards

Resources

• Carrell, Joshua D., Edward Hammill, and Thomas C. Edwards (2022) "Balancing Rare Species Conservation with Extractive Industries" Land doi: 10.3390/land11112012