John,
Tiehm’s buckwheat grows in just one small area in Nevada. It nourishes a highly diverse pollinator community and is one of North America’s most endangered plants. This rare wildflower and its habitat are protected by the Endangered Species Act, but now the U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to approve a mine right in the plant’s habitat, dooming the species to extinction.
Take action to save this sensitive desert flower and its home.
If approved the Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine will create an open pit deep enough to hold the Empire State Building, surrounded by the equivalent of 900 football fields of mining waste. It will completely destroy 22% of the plant’s protected critical habitat and come within 44 feet of the wildflowers that are left on the lip of the mine pit.
Mining operations like groundwater pumping, sulfuric acid processing, and hundreds of truck trips a day will turn the whole area into an industrial sacrifice zone, laying waste to the rest of the flower’s habitat and harming other wildlife nearby.
The BLM’s plan for the mine violates the Endangered Species Act and will give Tiehm’s buckwheat a one-way ticket to annihilation. But there’s still time to stop it.
Tell the BLM to follow the law and protect Tiehm’s buckwheat by denying the permit for this disastrous mine.
