laws, turning the region into a "clearinghouse for federal permits" and under-staffed mining inspections, perhaps related to a Trump administration directive to "increase activity at all levels of the supply chain" relating to critical minerals such as lithium that, is predominantly imported to the United States rather than produced domestically. In a 2020 interview, Patterson said that, since 2017, the BLM had permitted "far more development on public lands than the agency could ever monitor or enforce", having himself been the sole environmental protection specialist at the BLM field office in Tonopah, Nevada, responsible for compliance oversight of roughly of public lands. Between July and September 2020, over 17,000 plants, or over 40% of the population, were destroyed with massive damage to the habitat. Conservation biologists at the University of Nevada, Reno, land management agencies, and Ioneer, theorized that the damage was caused by burrowing rodents, supported by evidence from wildlife surveys and game cameras. However, other groups like the Center for Biological Diversity and Eriogonum researcher Benjamin Grady disagreed, and instead theorized that systematic, targeted vandalism was the cause of the losses, with botanist Naomi Fraga stating that it was only the Eriogonum that had been torn up and "strewn about — thousands and thousands of plants all across the habitat ... it wasn't happening to any other plants". Subsequent surveys have noted similar damage to storage organs in nearby desert plants, presumably caused by rodents seeking water in an exceptionally dry year. This has prompted calls for increased protection of the plants, rehabilitation of the affected area, and a further block on any exploration in the area. In 2021, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service along with recognized conservationists, such as Dr. Benjamin Grady, issued a proposal to list Eriogonum tiehmii under the Endangered Species Act, stating that the mining project at Rhyolite Ridge could have "an immense impact on the overall resiliency and continued viability of the species," as the subpopulation threatened by the mine is also the most productive at recruitment. The Fish and Wildlife Service failed to issue a final rule on the proposal within a year, as required by federal law. The plant was declared endangered in December 2022. References tiehmii Flora of Nevada Plants described in 1985