Endangered beetle could affect Keystone XL pipeline

A federal agency's recent decision involving the endangered American burying beetle could cause up to a year's delay in construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, if the project wins federal approval, an environmental group said Tuesday. But a spokesman for pipeline developer TransCanada Inc., said that assessment was premature and that the company would be able to work around new rules concerning the beetle. On Tuesday, an official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed the agency is not allowing researchers hired by pipeline TransCanada to trap and relocate the endangered beetles from the new path of the controversial crude-oil pipeline until the project receives federal approval. That's a change of procedure. Researchers hired by TransCanada were allowed to move hundreds of beetles from the initially proposed path through Nebraska's Sand Hills in the name of research. Mike George, state supervisor of the federal agency, said a lawsuit filed by anti-pipeline environmental groups last year prompted Fish and Wildlife attorneys to re-evaluate its practices. Now, he said, research projects on endangered species that require disturbing the species will not be allowed before major construction projects, like the Keystone XL, gain a federal permit. An official with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued the Fish and Wildlife Service last year, said the decision might delay construction of the pipeline by up to a year. That's because trapping and relocating American burying beetles can only be done in the spring and summer...more

Stop the research?  Why?  Another blatant example they don't care about the species...its about using the ESA to control land use.