S3E33: Dr. Naomi Fraga on the Frontlines of Botanical Conservation

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Chris): This podcast is made possible by financial support from our listeners. If you're not supporting us yet, check out 90 miles from needles.com donate or text the word needles to 53555.

0:00:24 - (Joe G): Think the deserts are barren wastelands, Think again. It's time for 90 miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:44 - (Chris): Thank you, Joe, and welcome to another episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Clark, and boy, has it ever been a week. We're recording this on Tuesday, November 12th, and so we've had just slightly less than a week to get used to the news that came out early in the morning on Wednesday of last week. We will be covering what we expect the desert to be facing under a Trump administration, and it should be complicated.

0:01:13 - (Chris): We're going to have a president who said he wants to completely gut all federal agencies and replace people who've devoted their lives to serving the public with their expertise, even if we often disagree with them, and replacing those people with ideological allies who may or may not have a single qualification in the area that they're being hired for. It's going to be a wild ride for the next four years.

0:01:36 - (Chris): Now we are working to put together a public event, remote attendance kind of thing, Zoom Conference on the topic of what do we do now? And we will let you know about that right here as soon as we have it set up. In the meantime, life goes on. The sun rises and sets still, the desert is beautiful still, the desert is still under threat. And we have a fascinating episode for you today that honestly, we could have put together even without the election looming overhead.

0:02:07 - (Chris): This episode has some bad news, but also some good news about really unusual and extremely rare desert plants in the state of Nevada. We're very lucky to be joined by Dr. Naomi Fraga, Director of Conservation Programs at the California Botanic Garden in Claremont, California, talking about two narrow desert endemic plants that are facing threats more or less unique to Nevada. And we think you're going to like this episode.

0:02:32 - (Chris): But first, as always, we want to remind you that this podcast doesn't happen without the support of its listeners, like, for instance, our most recent supporters, Constance Auld, Anthony McCann, Steve Bardwell, who we've interviewed on this podcast before, and Kenneth Buchai, who have all been quite generous in their financial support in the last week. We are so grateful. And you can join Kenneth, Steve, Anthony, and Constance, as well as our other financial supporters by going to 9zero miles from needles.com

0:03:03 - (Chris): donate and picking from among the options there, or texting the word needles to 535-5-5. One other thing before we get to our interview with Dr. Naomi Fraga. The Desert Advocacy Media Network, 90 miles from Needle's Mothership, has a substack newsletter that we send out every week, more or less called Desert News. You can find us at desertnews.substack.com and we every week go through a few dozen newspapers, most of them small local desert newspapers.

0:03:35 - (Chris): And we extract and collate environmental news items and put them all in one spot for you to read and follow the links and learn more if you want. And we've heard from a few folks that it's an incredibly valuable resource. But we only have subscribers in the low three digits right now, and we think more people will be interested. So check out desertnews.substack.com and if you like what you see, sign up.

0:03:59 - (Chris): It's free. And now, without further ado, let's go to our virtual studio with Dr. Naomi Fraga and talk about the Tacopa bird speak and teams Buckwheat in west Central Nevada.

0:04:22 - (singer): You Are calling down to liver again. I've got doubts in my hair And I wish I could feel your ghosts in these winds. You say you're steady and kind. But this heart holds the view I gotta keep what is mine. I can love you anymore? Love you anymore than I do right now. You wanna come in close? You wanna come in close? But you don't know how. But you don't know how.

0:05:39 - (Chris): We have here in the virtual studio with us Naomi Fraga, who is director of Conservation and Programs at the California Botanic Garden. Naomi, thanks for joining us here at 90 miles from Needles.

0:05:51 - (Naomi): Yeah, thank you for having me.

0:05:53 - (Chris): So there's been a lot going on with regard to desert plants, especially endemic plants in Nevada. What do you want to talk about first?

0:06:03 - (Naomi): Yeah, where do we start? I don't know. Maybe we start with the bad news first.

0:06:07 - (Chris): Yeah, let's do that.

0:06:08 - (Naomi): We can add on some good news.

0:06:09 - (Chris): Yeah. So the federal government recently said that Ioneer, which is a lithium and boron mining company, can go ahead with their mine at Rhyolite Ridge. And there are significant concerns from botanists and biological diversity activists and basically anybody that likes desert plants better than they like large open pit mines. What can you tell us about what's going on there? What's the background?

0:06:39 - (Naomi): Yeah, so Tieme's buckwheat, also known as Ariagonum temiae, is a very narrowly endemic plant that lives in the Silver Peak Range in Esmeralda County, Nevada, a very remote location in western Nevada. I've been working on this species since about 2019 when I joined forces with the center for Biological Diversity to defend this plant against a proposed lithium boron mine. And so at the time it was proposed, this project has unfortunately now been approved.

0:07:11 - (Naomi): The original proposal of the project, essentially they were wanting to translocate individuals to dig them up and they said they could put them somewhere else. And we've demonstrated that that's not a viable solution. You can't do that. They've altered their mine plans multiple times. And the current mine plan would construct a 960 foot open deep pit right at the edge of the buckwheat population. Eventually that buckwheat population would slide down into that pit.

0:07:41 - (Naomi): It would be an industrial mine site. Write smack within the whole range of the species. The entire range of the species occurs within their project plan area. So there would be huge haul trucks running by all like many times daily, causing big clouds of dust. Their plan to mitigate dust is to use massive quantities of water to tamp down the dust. So they're going to be using huge amounts of water. They've already created several impacts at the site. So their exploration activities have really facilitated the invasion of a non native plant called Halogeton glomeratus, also known as salt lover.

0:08:21 - (Naomi): That plant has the ability to really alter the habitat. It takes salt from the lower soil horizons and it incorporates it into its body. And then as the plant decomposes and breaks down, it basically brings salt up to the topsoil surface. It increases salinity, changes the soil character, and really makes it inhospitable for plants like the buckwheat. That's already happening at the site based on the exploration activities that have already occurred. There's tumbleweed that's spreading at the site as well. So I've done a lot of botanical work to document all these impacts. And that's just with some number, very few, much fewer acres of exploration activities. You can only imagine what this massive scale mine would do, totally altering the habitat.

0:09:10 - (Naomi): I really focused in on evaluating the impacts from invasive species, but then also the major impacts to the pollinator habitat. So what science and research have identified is that Teams Buckwheat actually supports a really diverse composition of pollinators that are very, very abundant at the site. Like researchers set out traps to catch these arthropods and they found thousands of them. Just in a matter of days they would catch thousands of them. And they identified them and found that they were incredibly diverse. It was incredibly rich assemblage and we know that Teams Buckwheat needs pollinators to reproduce. And within the habitat the supports Teams Buckwheat.

0:09:51 - (Naomi): There's not a lot of other plants that support pollinators. So it's understood that Teams Buckwheat really has this sort of disproportionate influence on the pollinator community. And this mine would wipe out just many acres of pollinator habitat that is important to Supporting Teams Buckwheat. It would permanently destroy, I think it's like 46 acres. And it would impact about 191 acres of pollinator habitat that has been deemed critical to the survival of the species.

0:10:25 - (Naomi): And so it was pretty disheartening as I was reviewing the environmental impact Statement which included as an appendix was the biological opinion from the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service when they issued a no jeopardy opinion that basically they said that this project would not adversely impact the species and not the project could proceed.

0:10:49 - (Chris): Well, we'll get into that in a bit, but I wanted to roll back to kind of the basics here because I know a lot of our listeners are not botanists or botanist adjacent like myself. I'm assuming that Thiemes buckwheat is not closely related to the kind of plant that we make pancakes out of the seeds.

0:11:11 - (Naomi): Well they do share the same family. So they are in the same plant family, but they're not especially closely related. So that would be. Yeah, Buckwheat pancakes is not the same as wild buckwheat which are the genus Ariagonum, which is especially rich and diverse in western North America. It's actually endemic to North America, so only occurs in North America, doesn't occur in other parts of the world.

0:11:33 - (Naomi): It's especially species rich in western states. And many of the species are restricted to very specific soil types. So that's something that's very common. You see a buckwheat on a weird soil and you might speculate, well that's probably a whole distinct species that only lives on that weird soil. And so that was the case for this buckwheat. It was described in the 80s by Jim Reveal, who is the buckwheat expert.

0:12:00 - (Naomi): So Jerry Team, who is a well known Nevada botanist, he was out exploring, looking at plants, found this very unusual buckwheat on this very unusual soil. And turns out it was undescribed and it was named after him. So Ariagonum team, Dr. Arnold team, who goes by Jerry.

0:12:20 - (Chris): Cool. I know that there are a lot of buckwheats out there and I know that they look pretty different. I mean, there's everything from desert trumpet, Ariagonum inflatum, to the. I'm forgetting the precise binomial of the one from the Channel Islands that's got the pink flowers and you find it in nurseries. Is, is that cetacean Ariagana?

0:12:44 - (Naomi): There's. Well, there's many from the Channel Islands that are found in the nurseries, but there's variety. I'm like blanking on the scientific name, but it's variety. Rubescence.

0:12:53 - (Chris): It's a grandy rubescence.

0:12:55 - (Naomi): Grande variety. Rubescence. Yeah, there we go.

0:12:58 - (Chris): Yeah. My point in that detour is just to say, just from it being an arum, we don't necessarily have an image of what team's buckwheat looks like. So what does the plant look like? If you're standing in a field of Thames buckwheat in full bloom, what is that? What's the experience?

0:13:16 - (Naomi): Yeah, yeah. Thames buckwheat blooms in May, June. So springtime's a really nice time for the plant. Early summer. It is a low growing plant, just a few inches tall. It is one of these mat forming buckwheats. So these are buckwheats that don't really form like a very tall stem. They just stay low to the ground and they have kind of leaves that stay right there at the base. So you can consider them cushion forming plants. So they look like they make little cushions on the ground.

0:13:46 - (Naomi): And then from this little cushion mound that forms leaves sprouts these stalks that have clusters of flowers that look like little pom poms. And the flowers are yellow to cream and they dry and age reddish. It's a very beautiful plant. When it's in full bloom, it's gorgeous, especially when it's covered in pollinators, which is something I've seen now many times. But in the wintertime, it's pretty humble, obscure little plant that really blends in with its soil.

0:14:19 - (Naomi): The leaves kind of wither away. It stays above ground all year, but the leaves die back, especially with the onset of drought. And then during the wintertime when it's under snow.

0:14:31 - (Chris): What are the issues with growing it outside of its original habitat? I know that transplantation and captive breeding and all that kind of stuff is sort of a standard tool in the toolbox of a lot of people that are working with threatened endangered species or species at risk that are maybe not legally protected. Why is transplantation not a. A route that we can look at?

0:14:55 - (Naomi): Yeah. You know, when we think about conserving plants, we're really wanting to conserve the plant in its home habitat. There are many different interactions going on in its environment. We don't know anything about the soil microbes, let alone we're just starting to tease apart and understand what the pollinator associations are. So when you pick up, collect some seeds, grow some plants in a pot, and then try to translocate it elsewhere, you're not taking along with it all of its very intricate relationships it shares with other organisms, organisms within its home range. And what we're really trying to do is the Endangered Species act actually provides a mechanism whereby we can conserve these, not just the species, but the ecosystems upon which they rely.

0:15:35 - (Naomi): Like that verbiage is written into the act. And so the habitat is just as important as the species. We're not trying to conserve museum specimens in botanic gardens. I mean, those are very important bits of information to help us understand species and to conduct research, but they're not a replacement for what exists in nature. And so we want to conserve that intact system and not just kind of try to replicate that and create a garden elsewhere.

0:16:03 - (Chris): What is the likelihood that this mine is actually going to go through? I mean, I know that there's a huge amount of lithium mine development throughout the west, you know, everywhere from the Salton Sea in California to Thacker Pass up in northern Nevada. And I recognize that this is straying from botany a bit, but what is the commercial outlook for this Rhyolite Ridge mine? Is it especially rich ore seam that they're taking on? Is it economically viable if all of a sudden our lithium production goes up by a factor of 5 or 10?

0:16:39 - (Naomi): One of the factors that would make this particular mine economically viable is that it's a combination deposit that includes boron and lith. So when you think about all the boron they're going to mine, so you could really think of it more like a boron mine rather than a lithium mine. So the majority of the product that will be mined at the site is boron, and that makes it economically feasible to then also extract the lithium.

0:17:09 - (Naomi): I think if it didn't have the boron, it wouldn't be economically feasible, Likely to just focus on the lithium. And unfortunately, ioneer does have a loan from the Department of Energy that they can utilize now that they've completed the environmental permitting process. So when that actually would take place remains to be seen. But they do have this loan from the Department of Energy, and they do have, you know, a number of investors, including other mining organizations, Sabani, Stillwater, has invested considerably in this particular project.

0:17:47 - (Naomi): So I don't know the likelihood of the project being built or the timeline. The center for Biological Diversity just issued a press release or statement noting that they're starting the legal process to hopefully halt the activities of the mind, basically looking at the Endangered Species act violations. And so I think a lot of what I've researched through the environmental permitting process and what they analyzed, that a lot of that might factor in to some of those legal arguments where really, it's really disheartening for me as a botanist who I work with, the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service, I work with these agencies.

0:18:27 - (Naomi): That's my standard mode of operation, is to work in partnership with agencies to facilitate plant conservation. And this is my first time participating in environmental review, like this environmental review process and being a participant in the public commenting process and really scrutinizing and considering all the factors that have gone into the analysis. And we say that decisions are guided by best available science.

0:18:58 - (Naomi): And here I am, a scientist evaluating this, and I find the no jeopardy opinion really disregards a lot of the important research in science. And they're relying upon the company's proposed mitigation plans, which are unfounded. Many of them have not even been developed. And so to say that the mining company can restore their way out of the just complete degradation of the habitat that they will facilitate this doesn't really stand up against all the research that is available out there to understand how difficult it is to restore habitats in arid systems, let alone endangered species habitat. And all the potential impacts, all the impacts together, considered together, certainly would warrant that, or it's easy to understand how it would adversely impact the species.

0:19:55 - (Chris): So we're going to need ways to store renewable energy. And I personally have high hopes for sodium batteries, and sodium is going to be a lot easier to find. But right now, lithium is the thing that we need to develop in order to get off of fossil fuels for a power grid. And given how important lithium development is, what do we really lose? If we lose the team's buckwheat, what's really at stake here?

0:20:25 - (Chris): I mean, because I can imagine people other than me, I tend to just appreciate things that exist for their own sake. But if somebody's really locked into a cost benefit analysis kind of mindset, what are we losing? If we lose teams Buckwheat, if we.

0:20:41 - (Naomi): Lose teams buckwheat, we're losing an essential part of the earth. We're losing a part of ourselves. Extinction shouldn't be the answer to our renewable energy Needs. There's a lot that needs to change. Big supporter of decarbonization, transforming our energy systems and finding our way out of the worst of what might come with the climate crisis. But we're doing it in a way that promotes just business usual consumption.

0:21:13 - (Naomi): And so do we really need everyone to have two, three electric vehicles? How much lithium is really needed? What is the cost of like the average United States citizen, like, way of living? And how do we transform our societies to encourage different modes of transportation, having ways that would be really more equitable, more livable for society to have better public transportation systems? Encourage mass transit rather than promoting car culture and everyone having EVs, including like Big Rivian trucks or Hummers, which require really large batteries, like an EV Hummer. Like, is that the answer to the climate crisis? I don't think so.

0:22:03 - (Naomi): And so, yeah, like, there will be some amount of lithium that will be needed for energy storage because that's the current technology we have. But I think we also need to consider, like, how do we find ways to make life better while simultaneously limiting or just restraining ourselves from like, constant consumption? Because the way we live now, we're taking it out of the ground now in the form of petroleum products, and now we're just going to take it out of the ground using different resources. But it's still, as you know, destructive.

0:22:39 - (Naomi): And I also agree that we need a domestic supply of lithium because we can't rely on the Lithium Triangle in South America and marginalizing those communities and species and ecosystems. So it's really a pretty big problem. And I certainly don't have all the answers, but I don't think that this particular project is the answer to our climate future. And certainly identifying projects that lead to whole extinction of species I don't think is the path the precedent we want to set or the path we want to carve for our future.

0:23:17 - (Chris): So before we transition into the good news, how can listeners help protect the team's Buckwheat? What kind of handles do we have for public participation at this point?

0:23:27 - (Naomi): Well, you know, the center is launching into their litigation, so we've completed the whole comment period on the environmental permitting process. And at this point it's really, I think, supporting organizations like the center for Biological Diversity that are doing the litigation and ensuring that there's enough resources to protect plants, that they have everything that they need.

0:23:52 - (Chris): Well, we can definitely provide a link in the show notes. In addition to a photo of Teams Buckwheat, we can provide a link in the show notes to the center For Biological Diversity's email list sign up and that way people can be kept updated on where things, where things sit. And if there's anything that the public can do. I know CBD is really good at making sure they do that. Anything else on Teams Buckwheat that we've neglected to say Extinction is a series.

0:24:22 - (Naomi): Of decisions and the United States government has made a series of decisions to advance industry above the law of the Endangered Species act in protecting species. But people support the Endangered Species Act. People don't want to see projects coming at the cost of extinction. And so it's not that this is the essential project that needs to happen and there's no other way around it. This species should have been listed well before this project even came into play.

0:24:54 - (Naomi): And this area should have been identified as an area worth protecting. I've long thought this the Silver Peak Range where Tees Buckwheat grows is just this incredible area. It's chock full of biodiversity. I had a student, Perry Lee Pipkin who just completed a botanical inventory of this place and identified numerous rare species. Some whole new records like plants that were thought to be single site endemics in the next mountain range over finding these plants in the silver peak range.

0:25:25 - (Naomi): Three state records for Nevada tens like I think over 20 county records for Esmeralda county and Nevada is not as well documented as California in terms of just like the collecting specimens and assessing the full inventory of biological diversity that occurs within the area. So we don't have really a full accounting of what all occurs there. And yet there's all these proposals and potential rampant development about to be unleashed in Nevada.

0:25:59 - (Naomi): And so we don't actually fully recognize what we stand to lose in this place. Teams Buckwheat was known about but if Jerry Team hadn't gone there in the 80s and if it hadn't been described, this project would have just moved through and we would have lost a species and there would have been a case of dark extinction. Extinction that happens without our understanding or knowledge. And I mean that's a very real case scenario that could be happening in Nevada.

0:26:28 - (Naomi): And so I think teens Buckwheat really brings these issues to light and we really, we need to talk about it so that species don't go extinct in the dark.

0:26:36 - (Joe G): Don't go away. We'll be right back.

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0:27:27 - (Joe G): Today you're listening to 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. When you've used half your water, it's time to turn around.

0:27:40 - (Chris): So the good news?

0:27:43 - (Naomi): Yeah, the good news? Yeah, there's a somewhat diminutive plant called Tecopa bird's beak that is a wetland plant that lives and has two population center is lives in two locations. There's a set of populations in the Amargusa river watershed and there are plants that occur about 150 miles to the north in Fish Lake Valley, which is just outside of Teams Buckwheat's home range right there, just outside of the Silver Peak range.

0:28:10 - (Naomi): So this plant petitioned for listing by the center for Biological Diversity due to ongoing threats including groundwater extraction, primarily due to agriculture. But then all these new and emerging threats. Again, the renewable energy extinction crisis is here in a real way where industrializing the desert really comes at a cost. And so this particular species in the northern part of its range in particular is threatened by lithium.

0:28:42 - (Naomi): Its entire range in the north is under lithium claim. There are two large geothermal exploration projects out there that would fundamentally alter the hydrology. And the Western Solar Plan was just released and it turns out now 100% of its range to the north would all be available for solar development under the Western Solar Plan. So it's sort of layer upon layer of threat due to all the infrastructure we're looking to build in the desert.

0:29:12 - (Chris): And so in the Amargosa, what are the threats? And actually this is probably as good a point as any to do the full disclosure thing and mentioned that you and I are both on the board of directors of the Amargosa Conservancy, which is an amazing organization that I really believe in and they're doing fantastic work and they've shown up here a lot on this podcast. But what are the threats? Are any of the birds beak growing outside of protected lands?

0:29:40 - (Chris): Is this groundwater dependent or is this surface flow kind of thing? What's going on there?

0:29:47 - (Naomi): Yeah, it's a groundwater dependent species. So the threats to the groundwater in the Amargosa pose a threat to the species. Interestingly, in the Amargosa there is an incredible amount of Land protection for the species. It occurs in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. It occurs in area of critical environmental concern on the California side in this place near Death Valley Junction. It occurs in the Amargusa Wild and Scenic river.

0:30:17 - (Naomi): And it also occurs in Death Valley National Park. By and large, in the southern part of its range in the Amargusa Watershed, development of the actual habitat is not as significant a threat. But the groundwater threat is so severe. We have the dairy there in Amargosa Valley and all the groundwater pumping for alfalfa and then you have just the expansion of Pahrump and all the domestic wells there that have a really important, very large impact on the groundwater supplies.

0:30:54 - (Naomi): And so that issue always looms large in the Amargosa. The groundwater is always central and it's a threat to all the species that rely on that ancient fossil water. And the Tecopa birds beak is one of those. And so the majority of the plants that rely on the groundwater that are narrowly endemic and occur in the Amaragus river watershed, the majority of them have that legal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

0:31:19 - (Naomi): And Tecopa bird's beak is one, just like one of the very few who that does not.

0:31:24 - (Chris): So that's where the good news aspect of this comes in. Right, in that we got a 90 day finding that the birds beak may merit protection under the esa. How did that start? How long ago did the petition get filed?

0:31:38 - (Naomi): Yeah, so just a full disclosure, I did not work on the petition for this species. I've been a pretty strong advocate of teams Buckwheat and really serving in that advocacy role. The center for Biological Diversity, they submitted that petition in 2023. And so now we have a 90 day finding. Was it 2022 or 2023?

0:31:57 - (Chris): It's more than 90 days before the finding.

0:32:00 - (Naomi): It was definitely more than 90 days. Yeah, it's been over a year. And so the center for Biological Diversity, they submitted a petition to have the species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. And yeah, so it's just great that Basically what the 90 day finding identifies is that there's a case to be made there and that they'll do the full review so that there's sufficient amount of information contained within the petition to indicate that they should do the full, the full review.

0:32:33 - (Chris): And so the next step would be the 12 month finding, which sometimes takes five to 10 years.

0:32:41 - (Naomi): Exactly.

0:32:42 - (Chris): And is the petition to list the birdspeak as threatened or endangered.

0:32:47 - (Naomi): The petition doesn't actually make a recommendation for either. And it's the service that will determine that listing status. So it just presents all the threats and the information that is currently available. I provided scientific information to the center for Biological Diversity. I've been doing research on the chocolate burt's beak, probably since about 2012. I've been interested in these populations that are isolated from one another and the relationship between them and if perhaps the populations from the north are distinct enough to be a different subspecies.

0:33:21 - (Naomi): So we're currently conducting that research. We're doing genetic research. We're looking at plant height and flower shape and all different sorts of characters to determine if these are distinct sets of populations. The whole range of the species is severely threatened, but in particular, the ones to the north are very significantly threatened that they would warrant the same level of emergency protections that were advocated for teen buckwheat.

0:33:50 - (Chris): So you mentioned plant height and flower color and things like that. What does Tecopa bird's beak look like?

0:33:56 - (Naomi): It's a sweet little plant. It is kind of purplish in color. Like, its leaves are grayish purple. And that's because it's partially parasitic. So it's not really like pumping out chlorophyll. Its roots attached to a host plant. That's how it gets established. And we think that its host plants are desert salty grasses like salt grass, Distichlus spicata, and alkali Saccheton spiroides. It occurs in these open meadows that are fed by groundwater.

0:34:29 - (Naomi): And it has pinkish lavender flowers that. It's a very striking plant. I think it's incredibly beautiful, and it's kind of a slender plant. The populations in the south, the plants can get much taller, maybe upwards of like 12 inches or more tall. And then the plants in the north tend to be shorter, and they maybe only get about 6 inches tall at most. Something like this. They're annual, so they complete their life cycle within one year.

0:35:00 - (Naomi): They're related to paintbrushes.

0:35:02 - (Chris): Okay.

0:35:02 - (Naomi): They're in the same family as paint brushes. And they could be not the easiest plants to spot because they are kind of grayish color and kind of blend in with the landscape.

0:35:14 - (Chris): That's cool. Is there any place where it's safe to recommend people go look? I mean, is there a. A spot like within Ash Meadows or within Death Valley national park that is reasonably well protected from plant poachers that people could reliably see if they know what they're looking for?

0:35:35 - (Naomi): Yeah. One of the easiest places to see it is actually in Tecopa, in the Tecopa Hot Springs area. So it occurs in the big marsh, just Right there at the edge of town, I guess on the north side of town. And it, I would say probably most people wouldn't want to go hunting for it to look, even to snap a photo because it's very marshy, it's very wet habitat. So you get your shoes all full of mud and you might sink in to the marsh.

0:36:07 - (Naomi): It also grows south of Shoshone right along the highway.

0:36:10 - (Chris): Oh, okay.

0:36:10 - (Naomi): Yeah. Oh, it's just, it is, it's a delight to see and I'm so, I feel so lucky that I get to work with it every year. And I have surveyed the populations and really added information on its distribution. And now we're doing all this genetic research and there will always be new questions to ask. So I'll just keep finding those questions so I could keep working with it.

0:36:34 - (Chris): Excellent. So is there a public comment period for the proposed listing or. I always like to ask how people can help.

0:36:43 - (Naomi): Yeah, that would come later down the line. So if once the Service has a 12 month finding and they have a proposed rule, then there is a public comment period on that and that would be the time when people can show their support. But that might be years from now. I would say all the work that is happening in the Amargosa, the work that the Amargosa Conservancy is doing, and all the efforts to protect ash meadows and protect the groundwater, protect the land in these areas, all those initiatives would be really important to protecting the species in the southern part of its range, in the northern part of its range. I think, you know, there will be proposals that come up for like solar that could impact the species, in which case people can really get involved in that.

0:37:32 - (Naomi): The permitting process for those individual projects, because that's how it's all going to roll out is just project by project with regard to the Western Solar Plan. And so we're going to be keeping an eye out and be vigilant that we can provide that information to hopefully protect the species. One of the locations in the north where this species grows that is so special and beautiful is called Gap Spring.

0:37:57 - (Naomi): And it's just one of the most incredible wetlands I've ever visited in my life. And it is a crime that this, that whole spring system is identified as available in the Western Solar plan. Like you would go there and anyone would go there and instantly know that that site should never be industrialized. Like, it's an amazing place.

0:38:19 - (Chris): Well, hopefully we can have you come on again in two, three years when the comment period comes up and you can update us and remind us what the bird speak is and all that kind of stuff. It's really great to have you on the podcast. I've been wanting to for quite a while and I'm just very grateful that you took some time out of your schedule, which I know is crammed to the rim to talk to us.

0:38:45 - (Naomi): Yeah, well, thank you for having me.

0:38:48 - (Chris): Naomi Fraga. Thank you so much.

0:41:03 - (Chris): Well, that wraps up this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. Big thanks to my friend and colleague Dr. Naomi Fraga of the California Botanic Garden for joining us to talk about these wonderful Nevada desert plants. You can learn more about either Teams Buckwheat or the Tecopa Birds Beak by visiting the center for Biological Diversity's website at biologicaldiversity.org

0:41:24 - (Chris): and/ or the Amargosa Conservancy's website at amargosaconservancy.org that is a M A R G O-S-A conservancy.org thanks to our voiceover guy, Joe Jeffrey and our podcast artwork guy, Martin Mancha, as well as to our newest supporters, Constance Old, Anthony McCann, Steve Bardwell and Kenneth Buchai. Our theme song, Moody Western, is by Brightside Studio. Other music is courtesy envato.com and even though politics has really heated up, the desert is cooling off rather nicely.

0:42:04 - (Chris): I've been on a couple of hikes already. It's easier to be outside for hours at a time without bursting into flame, which can, you know, put a damper on any hike. Nonetheless, remember that internal emotional stress is as dangerous to you long term as external environmental stress can be. Remember to breathe and breathe deeply. Take care of yourself. The desert needs you now more than it ever has, and I will see you at the next watering hole.

0:42:39 - (Chris): Bye now.

0:44:49 - (Joe G): 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.