Rats Needed to Keep the Keystone Pipeline Rolling [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

Photo by USFWS Mountain Prairie

The Keystone Pipeline people just can't seem to win. First there are the landowners and environmentalists down this way objecting to the pipeline hauling the sticky black tar sands through their property. Then the Native Americans are furious because they feel the federal government isn't negotiating properly with them about running the pipeline through their property. Now, there's an endangered beetle standing in the way, and the only way to safely move that beetle population and get the pipeline laid in Nebraska is going to stink. Seriously. It will take lots of dead rats.

The insect in question is the black and orange American burying beetle aka, the giant carrion beetle aka Nicorphorus americanus. It's a beetle that feeds and breeds on dead meat (Yep, nothing puts an American burying beetle in the mood to get it on like a nice dead piece of vermin.)

Anyway, the beetle has been on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species List since 1989 and the path of the pipeline runs right through American burying beetle stomping grounds, it seems. You can almost hear the folks over at TransCanada Corp. - the ones building the 1,179-mile pipeline to transport tar sands oil from Canada to refineries along the Texas Coast - collectively smacking their heads on their desks in exasperation. However the federal agency gave them an out, albeit a kind ratty one, according to Bloomberg.

To build the pipeline, the TransCanada people will have to trap and relocate the beetles using frozen dead rats. They'll have to thaw the rats at least three days for "maximum pungency" according to the protocol released by USFWS. The dead, smelly rats must then be placed in five-gallon drums and the smell - it's really important that these things smell as rotten as a dead rat can possibly smell - will basically act like a dinner bell for the beetles. The beetles will climb on in the bucket - buckets should be placed about a mile apart - and they'll settle in for a nice meal.

More at http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2013/06/rats_needed_to_keep_the_keysto.php .