Loss of habitat to feed horses=the primary crop in Pennsylvania, NY, and
New England was hay in 1900. By 1930 horses were all but gone from the
economy of the USA. The subsequent abandonment of hay production was a
disaster for Dicksissels, Bobolinks, etc. The entire ne USA is now a boring
second growth forest devoid of understory(too many deer, no cougars or
wolves) and avian diversity.
There are ample lithium reserves around the world that make a land
grab in the Trout Creek Mountains irrelevant to long range electrical
needs. The Clinton administration tried to overhaul the federal mining act
of 1880 something . This archaic system allows any foreign company to take
full possession of public land provided they prove the existence of mineral
resources, then show due diligence destroying the landscape to extract the
resource. Gypsum on the shores of a reservoir in Arizona can be made into
sheetrock. The mining company might decide to build some waterfront condos
when all is said and done.
Much evil is being wrought worldwide as we speak in the name of the
green new deal. Nobody, absolutely nobody, in Germany wants a giant
windmill in their backyard, front yard, or over the hill in some neighbor's
view shed. But many Germans are happy to pay extra for "green energy".
Large tracts of wilderness in Norway are being filled with paved roads to
build and service giant wind farms. The city manager and mayor of some
piddlyshit municipality equivalent to McDermitt have full discretion of the
licensing of the project. Public resistance to land based windpower is
speeding up the rush to offshore windpower. It's out of sight, so no one
will notice the seabird mortality.
Thousands of miles of salmon and trout streams in Sweden are being
drowned for microhydroelectric plants. The owners are typically foreign--a
German energy concern, the Norwegian state electric company. Nature and the
world at large are the losers. Modernization of existing power sources,
increased efficiency at end users, would more than cover the energy
produced by these ",innovative " ,non-carbonbased , non-sustainable energy
projects. The very isolation of Disaster Peak favors its developers'
success, the further from public view the better. Aren't the water rights
to the Quinn "River" already oversubscribed? Or does the Mineral Rights Act
trump the ranchers' haymaking?
On Sunday, March 7, 2021, Don Nelson <ac7zg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Most major lithium mines (only one in USA is in nevada) use large
quantities of water, and large evaporation ponds to process.
Water in the west USA , where 10% of the worlds lithium mine deposit
exist, will be the biggest issue that local flora and fauna will
experience.
Don
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 7, 2021, at 11:29 AM, Jeff Gilligan <jeffgilligan10@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Lithium production will grow world wide. The US is currently not a
leading producer. That falls to Australia and Chile.
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/top-lithium-producing-countries/
The rapid movement of replacing fossil fuel burning vehicles with electric
vehicles will be the main driver of lithium demand. Since global warming
is big problem, switching to battery powered vehicles that use lithium is
necessary unless we want to return to horses and buggies. Even horses
though cause gases that contribute to atmospheric warming, as well as the
destruction of habitat for horse food. Hopefully, any mining of lithium, in
the US and elsewhere can be done in a way to minimize environmental damage.
I am more concerned by the trend to giant windmills that kill large
numbers of birds, especially raptors, and are projected to chop up
California Condors in Kern County, CA. E
Hopefully the world’’s human population will stabilize or even decline
gradually, which would be the best solution.
Jeff Gilligan
On Mar 7, 2021, at 10:36 AM, Joel Geier <clearwater@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
As volunteers on the Nevada Breeding Bird Atlas (NVBBA) project in June of
2000, my son Wil and I surveyed an area in the Montana Mountains of
northern Nevada, just south of the Oregon state line. The tallest peak in
Montana Mountains, Disaster Peak, is just 3 miles south of Oregon, where
Harney County and Malheur County bump into each other, about 25 miles west
of Fort McDermitt.
For Oregon birders, the continuation of this range north of the state
line, known as the Oregon Canyon Mountains, may be more familiar. These
mountains, together with the Trout Creek Mountains, have been designated as
an Important Bird Area by the National Audubon Society, following a
recommendation by Craig Miller:
https://www.audubon.org/important-bird-areas/oregon-canyon-
and-trout-creek-mountains
To quote from the IBA listing: "Habitats include aspen woodlands,
mountain mahogany woodlands, shrublands, and savannah, as well as adjacent
diverse shrublands and wet meadows. .... [The] woodlands are the primary
location in Oregon for probable or confirmed nesting of Gray-headed Junco,
Virginia's Warbler. One of a very few locations in southeastern Oregon for
breeding Northern Goshawk, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Pine Siskin,
Mountain Chickadee, Red Crossbill, Bushtit, Hermit Thrush, and
MacGillivray's Warbler. Also hosts a significant number of active Greater
Sage Grouse Leks, a Warranted but Precluded ESA-candidate species."
The Montana Mountains contain similar habitats, but are less well known to
birders. They are remote from Nevada's main population centers, and
difficult to access. One of the few birders I know of who has visited this
range is Ted Floyd (now editor of Birding magazine), back when he was
coordinating the NVBBA. I can't find Ted's posting from mid-June 2000 in
the NVBIRDS archives now, but I recall he was excited about the place, and
speculated about the possibility of Grasshopper Sparrows in some of the
more open habitats. Here's a trip report from when Wil and I went there
27-28 Jun 2000 (last part labeled "SST 220 (Bull Basin)").
http://list.audubon.org/scripts/wa-AUDUBON.exe?A2=NVBIRDS;85113ac6.0006&S=
This was perhaps the most remote location where I've ever been, except for
one long backpacking trip into the Pasayten Wilderness. After we passed a
cowboy camp at the bottom of the road, in the Thacker Pass area, we drove
20-some miles farther in and saw no other humans for the two nights that we
camped up there. As reminders of civilization, we did see a mylar
birthday-party balloon that had floated in and snagged on a barbed wire
fence, and when we hiked up to the rim of the escarpment on the west side
of the range, we could see green circles formed by center-pivot irrigation
rigs in Kings Valley about 2000 ft below us.
Otherwise we saw Pronghorn, a few cattle, and birds. Sage Grouse (not yet
called "Greater" at the time) were so abundant that they became a nuisance,
because we kept flushing family groups while we were trying to sneak
through the Big Sagebrush and Mountain Mahogany to confirm nesting by other
sagebrush obligates such as Sagebrush Sparrow and Gray Flycatcher. Nowhere
before or since have I ever encountered such a robust population of
Sage-Grouse.
Now the bad news: As one of the last acts of the outgoing Trump
Administration, on January 15th, 2021, the Bureau of Land Management gave
expedited approval to what could become the largest lithium mining complex
in North America.
Lithium (Li) is an element currently in high demand, due to its use in
rechargeable batteries in everything from the smart phones that you use to
navigate to hotspots to seek out rarities, to the hybrid or electric
vehicles that might make you feel less guilty about driving hundreds of
miles for that purpose. Global demand for lithium is booming as these
batteries have become a core technology for conversion from a carbon-fueled
to "green" economy. While this may generally seem like a positive
development to combat global climate change, the local environmental costs
associated with lithium mines in Bolivia, northern Chile, and inland
regions of China have been very high, to the point of producing veritable
toxic wastelands.
The attached map (PNG file) shows the clay deposits that the mining
company, Lithium Nevada, proposes to exploit. The squiggly black line
labeled as "existing road" is the same road that Wil and I went up in 2000.
You can see that, although the main processing facility will be located
down in the Thacker Pass area, the "known areas of Li mineralization"
extend up along that road as far north as the line labeled 4645000, which
runs through Disaster Peak -- within 3 miles of the Oregon state line. Some
of the potential impacts for local residents, including the indigenous
Northern Paiute and Shoshone people as well as Euro-American ranchers, are
discussed in this article from High Country News:
https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.3/indigenous-affairs-mining-ne
vada-lithium-mine-kicks-off-a-new-era-of-western-extraction
Impacts on water resources, both for local people and wildlife, are likely
to be significant based on the history of similar mining projects in the
Great Basin.
If this operation goes forward as permitted, there is every reason to
expect that there will be a push to expand this operation northward into
areas with similar geology in Oregon. Folks who closely followed the Bundy
occupation of Malheur NWR and the underlying ideology of the "public lands
transfer movement" will be aware that this movement is largely a
stalking-horse for entities that have a commercial interest in gaining
access to public lands for exploitation of natural resources, without
oversight by pesky federal environmental regulators.
I just became aware of this mining project in recent days, so the purpose
of this posting is to spread awareness. I'll be looking into possible
avenues for action, such as contacts with senators who may be in position
to raise the issue during the upcoming confirmation hearings for Debra
Haaland as Secretary of the Interior. If you have additional ideas, please
share.
Thank you,
Joel
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis, Oregon
<ThackerPassLithiumDeposits.png>
