Sage and Sand: New Beginnings
I'm restarting the newsletter as uncertainty plagues other communication mediums and the biodiversity crisis rages on.
Greetings, and welcome to a revamped version of the newsletter from Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity. It’s been a long while since I’ve published, and I heard from many folks that they missed my missives.
I’ve got a somewhat expanded geographic scope than during the previous iteration of this newsletter, so I’ve changed the name of the newsletter and the focus. “Sage and Sand: Notes From the Fight for Biodiversity in the Great Basin and Mojave Deserts from the edge of Death Valley.”
The idea will stay the same however: periodic missives updating you on the activities of the Center across Nevada and parts of California, Utah, and beyond; plus notes on interesting news that catches my eye. Come for the information download, stay for the snarky takes.
The reinvigoration of this medium is partly inspired by Elon Musk’s disastrous takeover of Twitter. I’ve used Twitter as a primary communication medium for many years, and now it appears to be morphing into something much darker and more destructive than it’s been in the past. So I’m now determined to use this newsletter as a primary communication medium, and give Twitter a bit of a rest while the tumult inevitably leads to a collapse and rebirth over there.
And without further adieu, on to the news…
Tiehm’s Buckwheat is a Bona Fide Endangered Species
Just three years, two months, and one week after we submitted an Endangered Species Act petition to protect Tiehm’s buckwheat, the special little plant was added to the list of endangered species last week by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In one sense, it’s a thrilling denouement of a hard fought effort to get the plant protected. On the other hand, in many ways it’s just the beginning and the real work starts now.
When Naomi Fraga and I first met Tiehm’s buckwheat on June 1, 2019, it was in spectacular full bloom. We’d both been around the desert for whole lot of years, but we were starstruck by this beautiful, delicate, and incredibly rare wildflower. Here Tiehm’s buckwheat was, growing on just 10 acres in one of the most remote parts of one of the least populated counties in the US, discovered in the 1980s, known to just a small handful of people in the whole world. It was living its life in obscurity and was destined to remain that way until a lithium mining company came a-knockin’.
It was also very apparent that the poor plant was threatened by Ioneer's mineral exploration activities. They had built roads bisecting subpopulations, they were sinking wells, they had torn down a hillside right in a subpopulation. It was a disaster in the making. And based on the documents I’d obtained in a FOIA request, the mine’s plan was to destroy the majority of the plant’s habitat. I remember walking up that road that split apart subpopulations 4 & 5 and just saying, this looks pretty bleak little buckwheat. We were way out in the middle of nowhere and this tiny flower was just so vulnerable. I told Tiehm’s buckwheat, we will do whatever we can.
On October 7th, we submitted our ESA petition. Petitioning a species is a little like adopting a child. A piece of you goes into that petition, and you're taking responsibility for it getting those protections. We submitted the petition on an emergency basis, given what we'd seen. Crucially, Naomi Fraga submitted a letter of support with our petition (see pages 29-33). She staked her name to the conservation of the species. This has been such a crucial element of the fight. Naomi is an esteemed rare plant botanist, and she gave this campaign credibility & expertise.
We wouldn't have known about ERTI if it wasn't for the bravery of BLM whistleblower Daniel Patterson. He courageously spoke out against BLM's wanton violations of the law under Trump & tipped us off to this issue. Dan Patterson is a real American hero. A key breakthrough was when Adam Federman wrote an extensive article through Type Investigations in Politico Magazine about Dan's case & the plight of the buckwheat. This started a trend of broad national (international) interest in the buckwheat that continues to this day.
One of the most important parts of the intervening three years has been #TeamBuckwheat. At a hearing in summer of 2020, dozens of people spoke up for the buckwheat wearing Team Buckwheat t-shirts we had printed out. Thanks to all who showed up and stood up for our little flower friend! Naomi also rallied the scientific community and twice convinced over 100 botanists, including some of the most prominent names in the field, to send a letter supporting immediate emergency endangered species protections for ERTI.
Tiehm's buckwheat has come to symbolize the conflict between clean energy & biodiversity preservation. It faces utter annihilation from Ioneer's mine. It's got this unique zero sum game quality to it. It brings these moral issues into very sharp relief.
And so that leads us to last week, when the US Fish and Wildlife Service designated Tiehm’s buckwheat as an endangered species and protect 910 acres of critical habitat to protect the plant, its pollinators, and the other ecological processes that make its life possible.
The ESA listing doesn't automatically stop the mine. Not by a long shot. Right now, Ioneer's latest Plan of Operations has them creating a "buckwheat island", surrounding the most important populations of the plant with an open pit and tailings dump within 12 feet of the plants. The critical habitat designation includes a 500 meter buffer around the plants. That's a lot more than 12 feet. It will be impossible for BLM to claim that there's no adverse modification of the crit hab, so Ioneer will have to go back to the drawing boards. Or we will make them.
And here's the thing. This phase of the mine is just Phase 1. It's literally called a "starter pit" in Ioneer's mine feasibility study (see page 19). Their actual plan is to encompass 90% of the buckwheat's habitat with their mine. They say no, but that's what's in their feasibility study. That’s what’s being pitched to investors.
The Service is already expressing its concern with Ioneer’s new plan, stating in the listing rule it would, "disturb and remove up to 38% of the critical habitat for this species, impacting pollinator populations, altering hydrology, removing soil, and risking subsidence.” The rubber meets the road with the ESA during Section 7 consultation on the EIS. How will Ioneer avoid a jeopardy/adverse modification finding in a biological opinion?
We've argued for a one mile buffer around the plants, the minimal area necessary for their conservation. We proposed the habitat and a one mile buffer as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern in 2021.
The listing of Tiehm's buckwheat is not the end. It is the end of the beginning. Now that we have the most powerful conservation law in the world on our side, we need to rigorously apply it to prevent the extinction of this special plant. And we will.
As for the broader question - biodiversity or lithium? I would argue that here, the decision is made for us. The Endangered Species Act exists to prevent extinction. Tiehm's buckwheat faces extinction. There is no "choice" between lithium and biodiversity. It's the law.
We do need to find less harmful ways to produce lithium. I believe that direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies provide a promising answer to that question. I spoke about this with Cowboy State Daily this week. DLE projects are not without impact but they have fewer disadvantages than open pit mining or brine evaporation.
Meantime, tonight I'm going to sleep a little easier. Tiehm's buckwheat has the most powerful conservation law in the world in its corner. And tomorrow the next chapter begins. Let's do this, #TeamBuckwheat!
Read more from Associated Press, Pahrump Valley Times, Grist.
Scoping Starts for Rhyolite Ridge Mine
The ink had not even dried on the signature on the final rule for listing Tiehm’s buckwheat when, just 4 days later, BLM published a notice of intent (NOI) to prepare an environmental impact statement for the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Mine Project. We always knew they were waiting for the ESA listing to be finalized before commencing NEPA on the mine, but the rapidity of the two events in succession was certainly startling.
Ioneer appears to be holding fast to their Plan of Operations (POO), at least according to what’s referenced in the scoping document. You can see their depiction of buckwheat island on page 19.
Surprise, surprise, BLM sprung this on everyone over the holidays. They’ll be holding virtual public meetings on January 4th and 5th (more info here) and we’ll be rallying #TeamBuckwheat to turn out and speak up to conserve Tiehm’s buckwheat. Keep your eyes peeled for an action alert to submit a comment to BLM or just go to the aforelinked page for more information.
Read more from Pahrump Valley Times, E&E News.
The Dixie Valley toad also has its day
Tiehm’s buckwheat is not the first Nevada endemic species imperiled by clean energy which was listed under the Endangered Species Act as a result of our efforts in December. The Dixie Valley toad was listed by US Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered on December 2nd. It was just in the nick of time.
You may recall the Service gave the toad a surprising and rare emergency endangered species listing back in April of this year, as a result of Ormat having started construction of their project. The emergency listing is a provision of law intended to give the Service time to promulgate a final endangered species listing, and thus it lasts just 240 days. The 240 day clock for the Dixie Valley toad was up December 2nd, and that’s the day the Service published the final listing rule. Just under the wire.
As many readers are likely aware that it is existentially threatened by a geothermal power plant which would dry up or substantially alter the hot springs which create the toad’s habitat. And as with the Tiehm’s buckwheat listing, the Dixie Valley toad being listed does not automatically stop the project which threatens it with extinction.
In the case of the Dixie Meadows geothermal power plant, we were already at an advanced stage with our litigation against the Bureau of Land Management for their approval of the geothermal project. While an endangered species listing certainly validates and enhances the argument we were making, we actually felt like we already had solid ground for a judge to dismiss the project approval based strictly on NEPA grounds.
But instead, in the latest twist, Ormat and BLM have introduced a new project approval. Folks may remember Ormat broke ground on the project in February. After several months they had cleared, graded, and poured concrete footings for a 12MW portion of the project (which overall would have 60MW capacity when fully built out). Now, BLM is issuing a new project approval just for the 12MW project. Jeniffer Solis wrote about this in the Nevada Current last week.
In my view this is a transparent attempt to avoid getting a judgement in our litigation, which is looking increasingly bleak for BLM and Ormat given the grave deficiencies in the environmental review process for the project. Instead, they seek to short-circuit the existing litigation and will argue that a smaller project means smaller more manageable impacts. This is simply not true.
So we will continue to fight. Watch this space…
Paradise Lost
In a sad turn of events for Nevada’s public lands, Congress has sent a bill to President Biden’s desk which would authorize the enormous Fallon Naval Air Station expansion. The final bill includes an expansion of the NAS Fallon bombing ranges of over 300,000 acres, and the establishment of a Dixie Valley Training Area of almost 300,000 acres. Including the existing withdrawal for bombing ranges, NAS Fallon will now total 790,000 acres.
It's really a devastating blow. We’ve been fighting the Fallon expansion for over five years. And before this current iteration, our conservation forebears were fighting the Fallon expansion all the way back to the 1980s. It’s been a multigenerational struggle, but unfortunately it appears that struggle will end with a stroke of President Biden’s pen on the National Defense Authorization Act for FY23 next week.
It was always “the other expansion,” unfortunately. Simultaneous to the Navy putting forward this expansion proposal, the Air Force proposed expanding the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR – affiliated with Nellis Air Force Base) and swallowing up a million acres of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. That expansion proposal so shocked the conscience – so horrified everyone who loves public lands – that it sucked up all the oxygen. We fought for the Desert Refuge long, hard, and loud, and in the end we pushed them back and they got nothing.
Fallon, on the other hand, was less well known. The public lands in question were places like the Stillwater Range, Dixie Valley, Fairview Peak, Gabbs Valley, the Clan Alpine Mountains. As obscure as Nevada gets. While many people drive through these landscapes on Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America, few stop. Few know the terrain. Those who do know its rugged charm, its utter isolation, its feeling of the true outback. That isolation. The fact that most people have never heard of those places, would never visit those places, was both what made them so special, and what was their undoing. You can’t save what nobody knows.
One casualty in this story is Dixie Valley, now home to the Dixie Valley Training Area. This designation was pitched as a “win” by proponents of this legislation, because the land ostensibly remains in the hands of the Department of Interior. But the bill specifically states the land will be used for air combat training exercises, electronic warfare simulation, and ground combat training exercises. It also gives the Secretary of the Navy consultation authority over land use decisions made by Interior. Now, you may say, oh it’s still public land, but if I’m driving down the road getting dive bombed by airplanes in a dog fight, while electronic warfare simulations are being conducted and armored vehicles are moving down the road, that doesn’t sound much like public land to me. The Dixie Valley Training Area is in partial military control because of this bill.
Ultimately it’s wildlife that’s losing out. Increased overflight activity will disturb migratory and resident birds at Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge. Direct impacts from bombing will cause obvious harm and distress to wildlife unfortunate enough to actually live within the bombing ranges. Military training areas including Dixie Valley will experience increased air traffic, as well as ground combat training exercises. All of this will serve to disrupt wildlife and ecological processes across a vast swath of some of the wildest country in the lower 48 states. Wildlife had no place at the negotiating table, and it’s wildlife that suffers.
Oh, and lest we forget! The bill also authorizes the Dixie Valley water grab. Another water grab? Indeed. Churchill County has eyes on 10,000-15,000 acre feet per year of water in Dixie Valley, with plans to pump it and pipe it 50 miles to Fallon to fuel unsustainable growth and agriculture. It’s a very similar project, if smaller in scale, to the Las Vegas water grab & pipeline. The project has been on ice for many years, not least of which reason is the $200-$300 million dollar price tag. But it exists, in the shadows. It’s on the Churchill County water resource plan books. It’s out there.
And now Churchill County gets a big present in the NDAA with Congressional authorization of the project. Specifically Section 2699 of the bill states that the Secretary of the Navy “shall concur” with the project, and the Secretary of the Interior “shall complete permitting” of the project. With those simple words, the bill will launch a thousand lawsuits, as future generations of activists and water speculators face off about this project ten or a hundred years from now.
Some have argued that the language is simply instructions to the Navy et al. not to allow the Fallon expansion or Dixie Valley Training Area interfere with permitting of the water project. But that is selling project proponents short. Does anyone for one second think they won’t use that language as a legislative mandate? One day, I guarantee it, we will be arguing about the meaning of "shall complete permitting” in front of a judge.
How do we know? Does anyone remember the 2004 Lincoln County lands bill? And language instructing BLM to issue a right-of-way to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for the Las Vegas pipeline? Language which then tied BLM up into knots because they were forced to authorize the pipeline but couldn’t come up with NEPA analysis sufficient to justify such a decision because the impacts of the project were unmitigable. Ultimately the EIS was remanded by a federal judge after our successful litigation, a decision which kicked off a series of events that led to the demise of the pipeline. So nobody ought to look at the language in the NDAA and think it’s a silver bullet. It’s nothing of the sort. We have a lot of years and a lot of fighting ahead of us to save Dixie Valley.
Incidentally, the Dixie Valley water grab was specifically mentioned in the endangered species listing decision for the Dixie Valley toad. And the presence of the toad could greatly complicate things for Churchill County, given that pumping huge amounts of water from Dixie Valley could imperil the toad’s aquatic habitat.
There’s a lot more that could be said about the Fallon military land grab. Names that could be named. But what’s the point? Sometimes you fight and you win. Sometimes you fight and you lose. At least with the Fallon expansion, the fight is over, and ultimately the military got what they came for.
Read more in Las Vegas Review-Journal, Associated Press, Nevada Current.
It’s Not a Party if It Happens Every Night
The Amargosa vole is one of the most critically endangered small mammals in North America, with just a few hundred individuals inhabiting a handful of isolated wetlands surrounding the town of Tecopa Hot Springs, California. The vole lives in dense marsh grass habitat formed by outflow from hot springs, which are abundant in Tecopa. It has been the focus of extensive and expensive conservation efforts in an attempt to prevent it from going extinct.
It also has the unfortunate distinction of living at one of the most popular “natural” hot springs in the country. Tecopa Natural Hot Spring, also called Borehole Spring, is a hot pool and creek which are renowned for their soaking opportunities and healing properties. The abundant flow from the hot spring then creates an enormous three-square bulrush marsh, which sustains the best and most viable populations of the Amargosa vole.
The hot springs are wildly popular, having appeared on the cover of the Travel section of the Los Angeles Times, in an article in the New York Times, in an article with explicit directions to reach them in the Desert Sun, and featured on countless websites and guide books. It’s an extreme draw for Instagram photographers, and photos of the hot springs are constantly plastered all over social media.
And it shows. There are people soaking at the hot springs essentially around the clock, frequently a dozen or more individuals. People have illegal campfires, sometimes there are multiple campfires at once. People camp at the springs illegally. Off-leash dogs. And of course all of these people have to go to the bathroom and have nowhere to do their business.
For many years, locals such as myself have alerted BLM to these issues. And for many years, BLM has steadfastly held that such use is what land managers term “casual use,” meaning it needs no special management considerations. This despite the obvious and ongoing degradation of what is protected critical habitat for the Amargosa vole.
Well, we’d seen enough. So in early December, we sued BLM for violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to protect the vole from the impacts of unmanaged recreation at the hot springs. This followed our 60-day notice of intent to sue, which you can see here, that we submitted in 2021 – it is full of photographs of the wild times at Borehole.
What do we want to happen out there? There’s a variety of ways BLM can attempt to manage recreational use at hot springs. First and foremost, some sort of bathroom facilities need to be provided. There is a genuine human and wildlife health issue at Borehole with human waste everywhere. BLM needs to put in a toilet. Beyond that, BLM needs to consider hardening the site – making it more durable and better able to withstand the impacts of heavy use. This means fencing to keep people out of the wetlands, and possibly more expressly delineated trails and common areas around the pools. And finally, BLM needs to enforce the rules. There needs to be a ranger on site, often, so that people know that the area is being managed and cared for and it’s not a Wild West, anything-goes type of place.
This might sound like we’re anti-fun, but we’re not. I’ve soaked in these hot springs hundreds of times. The problem isn’t use, it’s overuse.
Read more in the Pahrump Valley Times.
Quick Hits
Things are grim and getting grimmer for the desert tortoise. I spoke extensively with Salon about the concerning trends for the tortoise, and the inadequacy of mitigation measures like translocation which are used to justify destroying tortoise habitat.
The Center sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service over failure to make progress on our petitions for Endangered Species Act protections for the Fish Lake Valley tui chub and the least chub, two rare fishes threatened by groundwater overuse in Nevada and Utah. Read more in the Associated Press.
That’s all for this first new revamped edition of the newsletter.
Keep on down that long and dusty trail,
-Patrick
Thanks Patrick. As a never-twitter user I missed the newsletter.
What is the best map detailing the final allocations in the Fallon expansion? Or better yet is GIS available? It'll be self-flagellation for sure, but I need to wallow in the details.