The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has approved a deal that hands 715 acres of a protected national wildlife refuge in South Texas to SpaceX, the rocket company owned by the world's richest man, in exchange for only 683 acres of private land in return. The public gets less. SpaceX gets more.

The land being transferred is part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, created by Congress in 1979 and funded by decades of taxpayer investment to protect some of the most biodiverse habitat in the United States. It's one of the last places in America where endangered ocelots still survive. It's home to aplomado falcons, piping plovers, and migratory birds that depend on this corridor. It includes hundreds of acres of Palmito Ranch Battlefield, a National Historic Landmark and the site of the final battle of the Civil War. And it sits on land that the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation has called sacred since long before there was a United States.

SpaceX has been a damaging neighbor to this refuge since arriving in 2014. Rocket explosions have scattered concrete and metal debris more than six miles onto refuge land. A 2024 study found that after one launch, every single monitored shorebird nest near the launch site suffered egg damage or loss. Rather than enforcing consequences for that damage, the Fish and Wildlife Service used it as justification for the transfer, arguing the land had lost conservation value. Value that SpaceX itself destroyed.

Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that while Elon Musk was running the Department of Government Efficiency and publicly threatening federal employees who could not justify their jobs to him, his agency contacts at Fish and Wildlife developed "the most expedited schedule possible" to finalize this deal.

This is not conservation. This is a sweetheart deal, rushed through for a political ally, at the permanent expense of public land, endangered wildlife, Indigenous heritage, and American history.

We are calling on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reverse the land exchange, and on Congress to open a full investigation into how this transfer was approved and why the agency moved at emergency speed to benefit one of the wealthiest men on earth.

This land belongs to the public. To the ocelots. To the Carrizo/Comecrudo people who have stewarded it since time immemorial. It is not a transaction. Sign to demand it stays that way.