By NICOLE POLLACK, Casper Star-Tribune
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — In a scrubby hollow at the northern edge of the Bighorn Basin, a mining venture could be thwarted by a rare plant with a funny name.
The Pryor Desert sub-basin straddles the border between Carbon County, Montana, and Big Horn County, Wyoming. Few plants can survive on its sun-scorched limestone outcroppings. But the roughly 20 square miles of hostile prairie are the only place where the yellow flowers and spoon-shaped foliage of the thick-leaf bladderpod can be found.
It’s also a promising source of gypsum, a mineral used to make fertilizer, cement, paper and plaster. Mexico-based building materials company Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua wants to conduct exploratory drilling on the Montana side of that particular sub-basin — in the middle of the thick-leaf bladderpod’s largest sub-population.
Montana’s Carbon County doesn’t have any gypsum mines. There’s only one in Big Horn County. Owned by paper manufacturer Georgia-Pacific, it’s located in Lovell, southeast of the plant’s habitat, the Casper Star-Tribune reports.
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“Prior to now, the species was in this small area of Montana that hadn’t had much development, specifically mining and off-road vehicle use, in the past, and now those threats are increasing,” said Kristine Akland, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. The conservation group asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last March to grant the thick-leaf bladderpod federal protections under the Endangered Species Act.
“Any mining exploration or subsequent gypsum mining,” the petition read, “will leave the thick-leaf bladderpod vulnerable to extinction with little chance of survival.”
The agency announced on Monday that the 25-page request presented “substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned actions may be warranted,” and it would complete a 12-month status review of the species before issuing a recommendation. One of the factors that can qualify a species for federal protections, it said, is “the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range.”
The thick-leaf bladderpod’s habitat is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Fish and Wildlife Service specified in Monday’s notice that the sub-basin was “recommended for withdrawal from all locatable mineral entry” in 2015, but was never formally removed.
In a draft environmental assessment of the exploratory mining proposal, the BLM noted the presence of the thick-leaf bladderpod, designated by the agency as an at-risk “sensitive species,” at eight of the project’s 10 exploratory mining claims.
Roads, trails and drill pads would, if possible, be placed in areas unoccupied by the species, according to the assessment. But, the agency added, “some unavoidable impacts to populations through disturbance, invasive species introduction, and direct mortality on proposed routes and overland travel could occur.”
Listing the plant as endangered or threatened — a first for the thick-leaf bladderpod — could preclude future mining in its primary habitat.
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