Wildlife Service Sued Over SpaceX Starbase Land Swap in Texas

Three environmental groups and a tribe on Wednesday asked a federal judge to set aside the Trump administration’s decision to exchange national wildlife refuge land with SpaceX to allow Elon Musk’s company to expand its Starbase site in Texas.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service on June 1 approved the Boca Chica Land Exchange, a swap of 715 acres of land within the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge near Starbase, Texas, for 683 acres SpaceX owns adjacent to a separate wildlife refuge farther north.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, The Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and the South Texas Environmental Justice Network say the exchange violates the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

SpaceX, FWS, and the Interior Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Though the FWS said wildlife habitat would be degraded because of the exchange, it found no significant environmental impact. The agency’s approval documents also claim the swap would create more contiguous tracts of refuge land and reduce wildlife habitat fragmentation.

But FWS failed to show that the exchange would benefit the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and comply with the preserve’s management plan, violating the refuge system improvement act, the groups argue.

“As the Service acknowledges, trading away 715 acres of this Refuge to SpaceX would further degrade and fragment this Refuge,” the groups said in their complaint.

The agency also failed to take a “hard look” at the environmental impacts of the exchange, violating NEPA.

“The wildlife habitat that SpaceX has sought to take ownership of has been degraded by SpaceX’s expanding operations and failed rocket launches,” the plaintiffs said in a statement Wednesday. “In its decision last week, the Fish and Wildlife Service chose to give those lands to SpaceX in exchange for fewer acres of private lands, the majority of which will be added to a separate wildlife refuge.”

Environmental groups say they’re increasingly alarmed at the Trump administration’s willingness to exchange public lands with private landowners to facilitate development. Defenders of Wildlife, which is not a plaintiff in the case, said the Boca Chica exchange and a pending swap at Georgia’s Cumberland Island National Seashore, are part of an emerging trend.

Exchanges are “used to facilitate development in national wildlife refuges, with SpaceX being the latest example,” said Christian Hunt, director of the national parks and wildlife refuge program at Defenders of Wildlife."We are troubled by what is clearly a developing pattern of intentional practice.”

The Center for Biological Diversity represents the plaintiffs.

The case is Center for Biological Diversity v. Nesvik, D.D.C., No. 1:26-cv-02053, 6/10/26.