Keystone XL firm moved endangered beetles before pipeline's approval

TransCanada has already moved endangered burying beetles in anticipation of the US government green-lighting its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Alberta to Texas

A Canadian company that is waiting for a federal permit to build an oil pipeline through the High Plains has used a technicality in U.S. environmental regulations to begin removing an endangered species—the black and orange American burying beetle—from the proposed route.

A spokesman for Alberta-based TransCanada said the company has done nothing wrong. The beetles were removed as part of TransCanada's "commitment to protecting the environment and endangered species along the Keystone XL route," Shawn Howard told InsideClimate News. According to Howard, the beetle is the only endangered species identified along the pipeline's proposed route from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

But pipeline opponents say that by moving beetles from the Nebraska sandhills and mowing miles of grass where the insects once lived, TransCanada has illegally begun construction on the project. Because the pipeline would cross an international border, the U.S. State Department is in charge of the permitting process. The agency is expected to make its decision by the end of the year.

On Wednesday three environmental groups filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Omaha against the State Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the beetle removal work be stopped.
Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the suit was filed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA makes it clear that "when you're in the process of considering a project, you can't do any work before you have a permit," Greenwald said. "By already doing work on the pipeline route, [TransCanada is] essentially bullying the process."

The Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit with Friends of the Earth and the Western Nebraska Resources Council.

Howard said TransCanada hasn't done any construction. "We have moved beetles and mowed some grass to assure the protection of the American Burying Beetle," he said in an email to InsideClimate News. "Mowing – not construction. And before any work was done, we received permission from the landowners to conduct these surveys."

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