This article was originally published by The Current, a nonprofit newsroom based in Lafayette.
South Louisiana, or its political class at least, was flying high two weeks ago after SpaceX announced it would bring $100 billion in investment to a largely rural parish and create thousands of jobs to support the space exploration company.
At the announcement event in Abbeville, SpaceX officials largely brushed aside concerns about how it could harm Vermilion Parish’s fragile coastal wetlands, particularly its resident and migratory bird populations.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s COO, acknowledged the importance of the habitat in her announcement but was optimistic about the facility’s effects. “Now the birds might fly away during a launch, but I guarantee: They come back,” Shotwell told those in attendance, resting that promise on what she observed at the company’s launch facility in Texas.
But with potentially thousands of launches a year, will they? Local experts aren’t so sure.
Rocket launches produce massive amounts of exhaust fumes as rocket engines burn methane, generating intense noise and releasing pollutants into the atmosphere and environment. The noise and emissions may impact local, migratory and federally protected bird populations in an area home to several animal sanctuaries and wildlife refuges.
Local experts warn that the facility could profoundly affect those bird populations, creating a “no-life zone” near the blast area.
Launch facilities like Space X may be fast-tracked through FAA waiver
Those concerns are compounded by a regulatory process that has been far from standard, including a potential Federal Aviation Administration waiver that would fast-track approval of launch facilities, leaving outstanding questions on how plans for the launch site would fundamentally change the overall landscape of the area.
That lack of insight is part of what concerns Erik Johnson, an assistant professor at LSU’s School of Renewable Natural Resources.
“There’s so much that we don’t know about this facility yet,” says Johnson, who’s familiar with bird populations in Vermilion Parish through his previous research.
The Louisiana coastal region, especially along the shorelines of Cameron and Vermilion parishes, plays an important role for migratory birds that travel up to 600 miles across the Gulf from Central and South America. The Louisiana coastline is sometimes the first land birds see and where they rest, sometimes for weeks, before spreading out across the North American continent.
One way to determine how the SpaceX launch facility will work out in Louisiana is to look at how it’s impacted other sites of the company. The Boca Chica region sits along the Texas coast and similarly is home to several migratory bird populations, as well as SpaceX’s only other launch site for its Starship rockets.
In Boca Chica, near the company’s Starbase, federal wildlife officials initiated an investigation into a 2024 Starship launch, after a nonprofit reported nearby nests of several species damaged or destroyed, but ultimately took no action.
An analysis by the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, the same nonprofit that raised concerns over the nests, found that one bird population began declining after SpaceX moved into the area. Between 2018 and fall 2021, the piping plover, a small bird already endangered due to habitat loss, saw a 54% decline in its population, with most of the decline happening in the first two years of the study period. SpaceX’s first launch at the Boca Chica site took place in July 2019.
Birds migrate along Mississippi Flyway and nest in wetlands in Vermilion Parish
In addition to being part of a major migratory route called the Mississippi Flyway, birds rely on the wetlands near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish for nesting and will likely be impacted by launches, Johnson notes, adding that some birds require three to four weeks to go from egg to fledging, meaning they can’t just fly away during a launch.
Polluting gases from rocket engines would, at least temporarily, degrade local air quality. Heavy metals and other chemicals from launches and spills would also likely enter the environment, posing neurological and reproductive risks to wildlife and nearby populations, experts say.
“You effectively lose that area, that space, pun intended,” Johnson says. “That area around the launch pad becomes a no-life zone. How big that area is depends on lots of factors.”
The nearby Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary, situated east of the forthcoming SpaceX site, is home to nearly 5,000 King Rail birds, North America’s largest marsh bird, comprising around 10-15% of the global population, Johnson says. Vermilion Parish coastal region also shows potential to accommodate the endangered Eastern Black Rail, of which there are roughly 50-80 pairs in Louisiana, mostly in Cameron Parish, with around 3,000 existing in the Eastern U.S.
The Paul J. Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, located west of the SpaceX site, declined to comment.
People, too, find sanctuary in the marsh — and the company of its winged residents.
For Lafayette restaurateur Hollie Girouard, the Pecan Island area offers a quiet retreat for birdwatching, far from the noise and crowds. Girouard spends more than a quarter of her time at her father’s duck camp there. She grew up in the marshland and remembers her father bringing her fishing along the Vermilion Parish coastline.
“All the reasons I cherish about that place are being taken from me,” says Girouard, who lives in Broussard. “If we’re launching 30 rockets a day, how much time is in between and how long is it going to take [birds] to [come] back?”
It’s unclear just how many rockets will be launched from the site once it’s operational, but Louisiana Economic Development’s website on the project boasts a “capacity to support thousands of launches annually.”
In a state already stacked with oil, gas and petrochemical plants, and multiple other large-scale industrial developments in various stages of completion, Girouard worries where displaced birds still have left to go. “The marshland is just covered with [birds]. Hopefully they will find a new place, but I feel like humans are just bulldozing into all of them at this point.”
The scope of impact is unknown, as are SpaceX’s mitigation-conservation plans
The scope of the area that will be impacted and the mitigation or conservation efforts the company plans to take are unknown for now. At the Aug. 25 announcement, Gov. Jeff Landry said the company will commit $100 million to the state’s coast master plan, but provided few additional details. Louisiana’s top coastal restoration official told Acadiana News First clarified that that $100 million is sourced from SpaceX’s purchase of the land from Louisiana and that the company may yet commit more.
The possible FAA rule change, which would waive more than a dozen federal environmental protections to fast-track aerospace industry projects, still raises questions about whether the company would even need to complete a routine, thorough environmental review, as was required in Texas.
By now, there should be at least some semblance of a plan for how a company will mitigate or avoid harming the local environment, says John Nyman, an LSU wetland wildlife ecology professor. As far as he knows, those plans haven’t been shared, and the public usually has an opportunity to voice concerns to the company at a town hall, he points out, comparing it to the usual procedure for oil and gas developments in the state.
“That’s how the system usually works. I would trust that would be happening now. Usually by the time something like this is announced, there has been an awful lot of work … in trying to do it with as little environmental impact as possible. Maybe that’s been done. I don’t know,” Nyman says.
“We’ve got a lot of words been released on what we’re gaining, and there’s silence on what we’re losing,” he adds.
According to a spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, preliminary discussions have begun with SpaceX about the project’s footprint and its potential impacts on wildlife.
SpaceX’s project remains in early stages, and information provided to the agency is limited, LDWF tells The Current, and therefore the department couldn’t comment on what impacts the project will have on any LDWF properties. The agency says it would review any designs, and provide technical evaluation and recommendations.
“Avoiding, minimizing, and offsetting impacts to coastal wetlands and the fish and wildlife resources they support is central to the Department’s mission,” the spokesperson says via email. “Mitigation obligations would be established through the applicable federal and state permitting processes rather than by LDWF alone, and we are engaged with SpaceX and with our state and federal partners on what that should look like.”
LED has also emphasized that the project will go through all applicable environmental, wetland and natural resources reviews.
Landry told CBS News that he is “not concerned” about the facility’s environmental impact, adding that the Boca Chica site is a “beautiful thing.”
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have already determined that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Actby releasing wastewater used to cool launch pads from rocket heat into nearby waters without obtaining the required approval.
7red7SpaceX didn’t admit to violations but paid $3,750 in state fines, and the EPA later fined the company an additional $148,000.
This moment brings up conflicting emotions for LSU’s Johnson, whose father did consulting work for NASA. “I’ve always had that sort of reverence for the idea of space travel. Like that is something I grew up with. I also grew up with birds. These two are coming together in this moment,” he says.
“It’s going to completely change the face of South Central Louisiana. … In some cases for better and in some cases for worse.”
