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https://www.eenews.net/articles/lithium-miner-rips-its-own-research-in-esa-fight/

Lithium minerrips its own research in ESA fight

By Jael Holzman |12/17/2021 01:18 PM EST

A mining company seekingto build a massive open-pit lithium mine in western Nevada put up around aquarter of a million dollars, hoping to prove it could safely move a rarewildflower out of the mine’s path.

Instead it wound up paying for research that could give thefederal government the science it needs to protect the flower, known as Tiehm’sbuckwheat, under the Endangered Species Act (Greenwire, June 3).

Environmentalists are relishing the irony, while the company isurging the Fish and Wildlife Service not to base its decisions aboutprotections on the research it commissioned.

“That study was an initial investigation of a very poorly studiedplant species, effectively providing scoping for future investigations, and notintended to provide definitive answers,” Ioneer Ltd. argued in a Dec. 6 letter criticizing FWS for using “flawed” data in its proposal to list the flower as endangered.

“The study cannot support the heavy weight that FWS has placedupon it.”

Lithium, a key ingredient in batteries, will be instrumental tothe future of clean energy. Automakers have said a cheap, plentiful and securesupply of lithium is essential for electric vehicles to be affordable for mostAmericans. For this reason, some large environmental groups can be open tolithium mining.

But Ioneer’s proposed mine, known as Rhyolite Ridge, has comeunder fire specifically because of Tiehm’s buckwheat — a yellow wildflowerfound only on 10 rocky acres at the mine site in western Nevada, and nowhereelse on Earth.

The Bureau of Land Management permitting process for RhyoliteRidge has stood still since the Fish and Wildlife Service declared it wouldconsider protecting the flower. The BLM regional office overseeing the projecttold the Elko Daily Free Press earlier this week it would holdoff on any more permitting decisions until after a final action on thewildflower. The bureau did not respond to a request for confirmation.

Knowing the flower could prove a challenge, Ioneer in 2019 firstannounced funding — eventually totaling at least $228,000 — for scientists atthe University of Nevada, Reno, to conduct research on whether the speciescould be replanted elsewhere and still survive.

But the scientists found that moving the plant from its nativesoil could prove complicated to engineer. During work on the study, aconsultant collaborating with the scientists also privately predicted thegovernment would list the flower under the Endangered Species Act, according topublic records obtained from the university by the Center for BiologicalDiversity and reviewed by E&E News.

When the scientific work was completed, the research wound upbeing a key piece of evidence cited by the Fish and Wildlife Service in itsproposal to list the wildflower as endangered — a finding that could makepermitting more challenging.

Ioneer Executive Chair James Calaway told E&E News thatfunding the study was part of the company’s “early work to develop science toprotect Tiehm’s buckwheat and understand it.”

He added, “Even though, yes, we funded academic research, there’sa difference between funding academic research and funding consultants that dothe work for you.”

The company has maintained that its plans for the Rhyolite Ridgemine have anticipated an ESA listing and it believes it can protect the plantwhile moving forward, including creating a buffer zone around the plants. Itsletter to Fish and Wildlife was not intended to oppose a listing, Calaway said,but to critique some of the science undergirding what was proposed.

“We are not opposing it being listed as endangered,” Calaway said.

But the Center for Biological Diversity objects to the company’scurrent plans, asserting they aren’t compatible with preserving the wildflower.The center, which filed the original petition asking FWS to protect the flowerand the lawsuit that eventually forced the agency to move on making a listingdecision, said the research was properly considered by the Fish and WildlifeService (Greenwire, April 22).

“It certainly helped our cause, the fact that it was a completeand total failure,” said Patrick Donnelly, the center’s Nevada state director.

There is a lot of money riding on the project and what happenswith the flower. Sibanye-Stillwater, a large precious metals company, recentlyagreed to inject hundreds of millions into Rhyolite Ridge but only if Ioneer gets all its permits for the mine (Greenwire, Sept. 16).

If the company can’t get its permits, the money could vanish. YetCalaway expressed no bitterness about the path his company took to get here.

“We don’t have regrets about that study,” he said.

‘There isn’t a fix’

Tiehm’s buckwheat got itsname from botanist Arnold Tiehm, who discovered the flower in the Silver Peakmountain range in 1983. Human activity over time, including mining, created aunique hydrology in its habitat, producing the rich lithium-boron soil that thebuckwheat needs to grow.

The flower has never been found elsewhere. Conservationists sayspecies like this are a reason the Endangered Species Act exists.

“It really is a poster child for the act,” said Naomi Fraga,director of conservation at the California Botanic Garden.

The university research funded by Ioneer was headed by biologyprofessor Beth Leger and graduate student Jamey McClinton, and it sought tounderstand whether the buckwheat could be removed from its unique soil.

For more than a year, the scientists studied the prevalence ofinsects and spiders around the buckwheat’s environment, the importance ofpollination and soil variation to its survival, and whether replanting was aviable option for the company.

As Leger and others involved in the study worked on theirresearch, some involved privately admitted the flowers could wind up with ESAprotections, according to the documents obtained by the Center for BiologicalDiversity and reviewed by E&E News.

“Nothing that we are researching is a quick fix, or even a fix.There isn’t a fix for this type of impact,” Kris Kuyper, a biology programmanager with permitting consultant EM Strategies, wrote Leger in a Jan. 7email.

Kuyper told Leger, “I’m sure [the flower] will be listed” underthe Endangered Species Act, and “it should be” listed.

“[T]hen it will be a matter of consultation with the USFWS. I lookat the research that Ioneer is funding as being useful to inform thatconsultation. It’s understandable that Ioneer doesn’t have a biologist’s perspective,and part of my job is to try to get them to understand the science and the timerequired,” Kuyper wrote.

“Right on, all around,” Leger replied.

The study ended prematurely last year after multiple “herbivoryevents” that affected plant survival — including a mass plant die-off thatinvestigators determined was most likely caused by squirrels (E&E News PM, Dec. 4, 2020).

‘Soil specialist’

The scientists’ work culminated in a report submitted this pastJanuary to the company. The document, which was obtained by E&E News, states Tiehm’s buckwheat is a “rare soil specialist,” meaning it needs the unique soil conditions of its native habitat.

The scientists concluded, according to the report, that thespecies “substantially contributes to and benefits from the high abundance anddiversity” of native insects and pollinators.

They also wrote the wildflowers “are not simply highlystress-tolerant, but that they are specifically adapted to their preferred soiltypes.” This finding was “borne out by the transplant experiment,” the reportstated.

In the company’s favor, the scientists wrote “it is possible” toplant seedlings of the buckwheat in a greenhouse, and that growing them in thefield “promoted high root allocation that was likely beneficial” for survivinga transplant.

But that finding came with a qualifier. Although “some occupiedsites we tested were favorable for some life history stages,” they wrote, “wedid not identify unoccupied sites that could support both establishment andgrowth” of Tiehm’s buckwheat seedlings. More work is needed to determinewhether suitable sites can be identified, they said.

Even though the study ended early, the mining company ultimatelypraised the report as a scientific achievement, focusing on positive news likethe possibility of growing seedlings in a greenhouse. A news release in Januarycelebrating the report proclaimed Leger and her team had “greatly advance[d]existing knowledge of Tiehm’s buckwheat and create[d] the foundation for futureefforts to ensure long term protection.”

Career staffers at the Fish and Wildlife Service, who werepreparing an assessment as part of the federal decisionmaking process aroundTiehm’s buckwheat, also found the scientists’ work notable.

Last April, the agency released a species status assessmentconcluding the “best available research" indicated the flower was a “soilspecialist” and “adjacent, unoccupied sites were not suitable for all earlylife history stages.” The assessment cited the Ioneer-funded study at least 35times, excluding the bibliography.

In October, Fish and Wildlife again referenced the same studyseveral times as it proposed protecting the flower as endangered under theEndangered Species Act.

Ioneer told E&E News the company had sent the report to Fishand Wildlife so the agency could see what it said.

But only after the government referenced the study to protect theflower did the company begin criticizing it publicly.

In its recent letter submitted to Fish and Wildlife, the companysaid the university research was too limited to provide the basis for federalspecies protections. Poking at the species assessment, Ioneer said FWS “simplyadopts” the conclusions of the paper “as true and definitive.”

“However, a closer examination of the available data indicatesthat the analyses and statements imbedded in [the study] are based upon smallsample sizes and plagued by misleading interpretations,” stated the Dec. 6letter.

Ioneer’s Calaway told E&E News the company aired its concernsabout the study it funded to Fish and Wildlife before the agency beganincorporating it into its decisions about protecting the flower. The commentletter demonstrated how “there are certain moments you have to put in writingfor the record where you have differences.”

“We just think that they grossly overstated what they could sayfrom the data they used,” Calaway said.

In an email to E&E News, Leger stated that the Ioneer-fundedpaper had been submitted for peer review and that she hadn’t been aware ofIoneer’s letter. She declined to comment on the company’s criticisms.

However, she agrees with the Fish and Wildlife Service that herresearch represents the “best available science.”

“Unlike the public comments by Ioneer, I’ll note that peer reviewis conducted by scientists with no incentive to interpret work in one way oranother, and we anticipate incorporating those unbiased reviews into our finalpublished product,” Leger wrote.

Asked about Leger’s email, Calaway batted back.

“If she says those things, I’m sure she thinks that,” he said. “Scienceshould be about not making a comment like that but looking at the data.”

Fraga, the botanist from the California Botanic Garden, tooknotice when Ioneer first disclosed that it was funding research at theUniversity of Nevada, Reno. It was the first study of any kind in over a decadeto be conducted on the buckwheat.

She was concerned at the time about the ethics of Ioneer’sfinancial relationship with the university. In an op-ed published in the RenoGazette-Journal, she asked, "When will biologists and ecologists say ‘no’to assisting industry with misguided mitigation projects for rare plants?"

But when it came to the people involved with the study, Fraga saidshe trusted the team and is now defending Leger’s work.

“Beth Leger is well-known. In my comments about the research, Inever disputed the expertise that Dr. Leger and her lab bring to increasing ourunderstanding of Tiehm’s buckwheat,” Fraga said. “She’s well regarded as ascientist in her field.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service last week released a new schedulefor a final decision on protecting Tiehm’s buckwheat as endangered. A proposedrulemaking on critical habitat is expected next month, and a final rulemakingon listing is anticipated in late fall 2022.

Calaway said the company is “working very hard” with “the agencieson a plan that is careful.” It has plans to mitigate harm to the flower even ifthe species receives ESA protections, Calaway said, and hopes Fish and Wildlifewill be “careful” with the science it considers.

“This is the science process. What we’ve done is going to aid andassist Fish and Wildlife to make the best decisions for the plant, and that’sall we’re doing here,” he said.