Environmentalists and tribal leaders are vowing to fight what could become the third lithium mine in America, a key element of President Biden’s green energy agenda, which they say is “greenwashing extinction.”

The Bureau of Land Management is working to expedite its environmental review of the Rhyolite Ridge mine in Nevada. After it released more than 2,000 pages of documents in a draft environmental impact statement last week, top administration officials touted the progress as “another step by the Biden-Harris administration to support the responsible, domestic development of critical minerals to power the clean energy economy.”

The mine’s production of lithium — a metal critical to the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles — could begin as early as 2027. That’s only if the administration withstands anticipated legal challenges from environmental groups that say it could lead to the extinction of an endangered Nevada wildflower near the California border.

The leaders of three Native American tribes have also spent nearly two years fighting the Nevada mine. 

“Greenwashing extinction” is how a director at the Center for Biological Diversity, Patrick Donnelly, described the mine to the Associated Press last week. He says the current protection plan would violate the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Mr. Biden’s support for the mine, some environmentalists say, suggests he is neglecting American protections for native wildlife and rare species in the name of combating climate change. That critique could undermine Mr. Biden’s push for energy independence amid global competition for renewables. It also hints at skepticism from voters over his efforts to ease American reliance on fossil fuels, a key talking point for his presidential campaign. 

The Department of Energy granted a $2.26 billion conditional loan to Lithium Americas, which is building another lithium mine in Nevada, in March. That loan is contingent on the department’s review of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act. The energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said in a post on X: “Thacker Pass is a treasure trove of lithium — key to strengthening U.S. energy security and electrifying America.” 

The president is also facing pushback from tribal leaders who say the mine borders the sacred site of a massacre of more than two dozen Native Americans in 1865. In January, three tribes voluntarily dismissed a challenge they had brought with conservationists against the Department of the Interior over the Thacker Pass mine, though they maintained that Lithium Nevada “has been destroying the sacred sites in Thackler Pass for over a year now.”

“Green colonialism” is how a resident of the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation in Nevada, Daranda Hinkey, described the push for renewable energy to the Associated Press last June. A similar conflict has arisen in Arizona over the proposed construction of a copper mine on land that some Apache consider sacred. An appeals court blocked that proposal last year.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has been doubling down on efforts to work with Native American leaders. In December, an interior department assistant secretary, Bryan Newland, made clear that the government was entering a new era of collaboration to better manage the “hundreds of millions of acres of what we call federal public lands.”