3 min read Endangered Belugas Force Devastating Oil Project To Stop

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A population of endangered beluga whales has stopped an environmental disaster from happening. Transcanada announced Wednesday that it was scrapping development for a proposed supertanker oil export terminal in Quebec as part of its $9.5 billion Energy East pipeline project, reports La Presse (via Reuters). "It's a beautiful victory for the preservation and sustainability of the belugas we have in the St. Lawrence River," said Bernard Drainville, a Canadian politician and journalist, at a news conference.

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TransCanada had announced a pause in development in the St. Lawrence River site last December, but now the entire project has been trashed in the province. The animal behind the move is the beluga whale, a sub-Arctic cetacean famous for his bright white skin and bulbous head. In December, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada announced that the St. Lawrence River population hovers at just about 1,000 animals and recommended that the population be listed as endangered. Once numbering as high as 10,000 individuals, the population has been decimated historically by whaling and now by pollution.

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