Environmental group Western Watersheds Project has petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list the rare Kings River pyrg, a springsnail found in a remote corner of north-western Nevada, as an endangered or threatened species.

The pyrg is known to live only in 13 isolated springs around Thacker Pass, an area slated for large-scale lithium mining recently approved by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

“This rare springsnail’s entire worldwide range stands to be affected by openpit lithium mining, which threatens to draw down or contaminate all 13 springs where it is known to live,” says wildlife biologist and Western Watersheds Project executive director Erik Molvar.

He argues that endangered species listing is necessary to ensure the survival of the species.

Citing impact analysis from the BLM, the group states that the dewatering of aquifers that feed the springs inhabited by the Kings River pyrg is likely to draw down near-surface aquifers by 10 feet in the lithium mine project area and surrounding lands. This, Western Wildlife Project argues, could cause springs that have flowed continuously for centuries to dry up, killing off their populations of springsnails, which breathe via gills.

The Kings River pyrg’s survival is also threatened by livestock grazing, diversion of water from springs, road construction, and climate change.

“The potential extinction of the tiny King’s River pyrg illustrates how delicate desert aquifers become heavily impacted by industrial mining activity,” says Kevin Emmerich, director of Basin and Range Watch.

He argues that the water usage of Thacker Pass, advanced by Americas Lithium, will be unsustainable for much of the wildlife in the Montana mountains and will become a death sentence for the rare springsnail.

The mine also threatens to destroy sage grouse priority habitats and a massacre site where 31 Paiute men, women, and children were killed as they slept by a US Cavalry detachment.

“There is no doubt that our nation needs to transition from the dirty fossil fuels that are responsible for climate change to renewable fuels, but we should be careful not to site lithium mines in sensitive habitats or culturally important areas,” Molvar said.

“We have a responsibility as a society to avoid wreaking ecological havoc as we shift to renewable technologies. If we exacerbate the biodiversity crisis in a sloppy rush to solve the climate crisis, we risk turning the Earth into a barren, lifeless ball that will no longer support our own species, let alone the complex and delicate web of other plants and animals with which we share this planet.”

Thacker Pass and surroundings are the ancestral homes of the Shoshone and Paiute peoples.

In early 2021, the Trump administration approved plans for a $1-billion openpit mine at Thacker Pass. The Biden administration has since defended that decision.

Supporters say the mine built by Canadian firm Lithium Americas could produce enough lithium each year to match 2020’s total global output. But the project has run into fierce local opposition.