#ENVIRONMENT
JULY 21, 2017 / 5:12 PM / 4 HOURS AGO

Trump administration seeks to sidestep border wall environmental study: sources

Emily Flitter

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol plans to use a 2005 anti-terror law to sidestep an environmental impact study for a section of President Donald Trump's border wall that will pass through a Texas national refuge for endangered ocelots, according to two government sources familiar with the matter.

Trump's 2018 budget proposal calls for 32 miles (51 km) of new border wall in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border, where the 2,000-acre Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge is located.

The area near the southern tip of Texas is home to 400 species of birds as well as a dwindling population of federally protected ocelots. Only about 50 ocelots remain in the United States, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The sources said CBP officials had informed them CBP would rely on exemptions provided to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under the Real ID Act, a law created on recommendations from the 9/11 Commission, so they can start building the section of wall without waiting for the years-long environmental study.

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