The fight continues against SpaceX’s controversial South Texas land swap.
That deal, which the company made with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), gives SpaceX 727 acres (294 hectares) of public land that’s currently part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. In exchange, the company hands over 683 acres (276 hectares) of its territory in the area, not all of it contiguous, to the USFWS.
Last month, a coalition of conservation and tribal groups sued the USFWS over the swap, saying it degrades the refuge and violates multiple laws, including the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997. And yesterday (July 20), those groups filed an emergency injunction, asking a federal judge to stop the exchange until the courts can rule on the ongoing case.
“Federal officials are racing to fork over America’s public lands to one of wealthiest corporations on Earth before the courts can even weigh in,” Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement yesterday (July 20).
“This refuge is one of the last places left for the public to enjoy nature in the Rio Grande Valley,” Jordahl added. “Why should Texans be forced to surrender even more of their public lands to a trillion-dollar corporation? The court has to intervene now, because once these refuge lands are transferred to SpaceX, they’re gone forever.”
The land set to be transferred to SpaceX is near Starbase, the manufacturing and launch hub for the company’s Starship megarocket. SpaceX sees Starship as transformational; it’s the biggest and most powerful launcher ever built, and it’s designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.
Starship remains in the development-and-testing phase. It has flown 12 suborbital test flights to date, all of them from Starbase, and is gearing up for Flight 13 this Thursday (July 23).
These launches pose a threat to the wildlife that the 90,000-acre (36,420 hectares) refuge was established to protect, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation nonprofit based in Tucson, Arizona.
“A 2024 study found that, after one launch, every single monitored shorebird nest near the launch site suffered egg damage or loss,” the organization said in yesterday’s statement. “Instead of taking any enforcement actions or working with SpaceX to reduce or eliminate its harm to the refuge, the Service [USFWS] is now citing the resulting degradation as justification for handing the public land to SpaceX.”
Some of the land being transferred to SpaceX is part of the Palmito Ranch Battlefield National Historic Landmark, where the final battle of the Civil War was fought. This means the swap also violates the National Historic Preservation Act, according to the Center or Biological Diversity.
The Center or Biological Diversity and its partners also take issue with how the land deal was made.
“The proposed land exchange was first made public in March, but records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show internal agency planning began as early as April 2025,” yesterday’s statement reads. “In those discussions with the regional director of the Service, the agency developed ‘the most expedited schedule possible’ for completing a land transfer and recommended hiring additional staff to meet what they described as an ‘optimum timeframe.'”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the USFWS are the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc., and the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.
