RENO, Nev.— A coalition of environmental and Tribal groups sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management today to challenge its authorization of the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Mine in Nevada’s Esmeralda County.

As today’s lawsuit notes, scientists have warned that the Rhyolite Ridge Mine would drive the rare wildflower Tiehm’s buckwheat to extinction. The plant’s entire global population is within the footprint of the mine. The project would also severely damage water sources and sacred sites in the Silver Peak Range where it is sited, harming the cultural heritage of the Western Shoshone people.

“This lawsuit is about much more than just preventing the extinction of Tiehm’s buckwheat,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Bureau of Land Management’s authorization of the Rhyolite Ridge Mine is a flagrant violation of numerous environmental protection laws, and the integrity of these bedrock conservation laws is at stake. We need lithium for the crucial transition to renewable energy, but the government can’t break the law and drive species to extinction to get it.”

Tiehm’s buckwheat is a rare Nevada wildflower with delicate cream-colored blossoms that grows on just 10 acres of the boron- and lithium-rich soils of the Silver Peak Range in Esmeralda County, directly in the footprint of the mine. As a result of the Center’s petition and subsequent lawsuits, the buckwheat was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 2022.

The mine plan calls for a 1,000-foot-deep open pit surrounded by 2 square miles of waste rock dumps and a sulfuric acid processing plant. Hundreds of truck trips per day would create an industrial zone in a currently pristine area that’s home to bighorn sheep, golden eagles and hundreds of species of plants.

The mine will severely and irreversibly harm or destroy sites sacred to the Western Shoshone people. Cave Spring, less than a mile from the proposed mine pit, has been described by the Western Shoshone Defense Project as, “a site of intergenerational transmission of cultural and spiritual knowledge.” It’s among the dozens of nearby springs that will almost certainly go dry because of the mine pumping hundreds of millions of gallons of groundwater each year.

“Continuously extracting resources to maximize profit harms land and water, and we’ve witnessed plant and animal life disappear as the government mismanages the environment it’s supposed to protect,” said Fermina Stevens, director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project. “The U.S. and corporations claim to be saving the planet as they destroy land and pollute water by bending and breaking the law. This, however, comes as no surprise to the Western Shoshone. The U.S. government has been dishonoring its word, and its laws, since arriving in our territory 200 years ago. We were denied our right to due process, equality before the law, and the right to land in the so-called taking by gradual encroachment. In addition, we’re now being denied our right to the wealth that will be generated from our land and will be left with pollution. In the end, the Indigenous people of Nevada will suffer the consequences of irresponsible land management. One cannot save the planet from climate change while simultaneously destroying biodiversity.”

Today’s lawsuit says the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act in approving the mine. The environmental review process was described as being on “a very aggressive schedule that deviates from other project schedules on similar projects,” according to internal BLM emails obtained by the Center through the Freedom of Information Act.

The coalition submitted expert reports to the BLM during the permitting process, analyzing botanical resources including dust deposition, geotechnical engineering and hydrology. The lawsuit says the BLM ignored these findings, instead relying on mining company science to justify a conclusion that the mine would not harm endangered species or cultural sites.

“The Rhyolite Ridge mine approval was reckless and a disaster waiting to happen. The full consequences of the proposed mine have not been determined,” said John Hadder, director of Great Basin Resource Watch. “The end use of minerals, whether for EVs or solar panels, does not justify this disregard of Indigenous cultural areas and keystone environmental laws. Approval of this mine risks rolling back standards of protection and advancing an era of relaxed mine permitting that we and future generations will seriously regret.”

The coalition is represented by Roger Flynn of the Western Mining Action Project and in-house counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity.