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At a news conference Monday, Abbott said he knew very little about the potential sale, which was reported by Texas Monthly last week.
“What I know is that that’s not coming up for a vote anytime soon,” Abbott said.
Abbott said he is unaware of the details of what the Parks and Wildlife Department is considering but that his priority is to ensure the state lived up to what he had signed into law.
“I’ve been at multiple locations across the state where we are adding new parks to the entire parks and wildlife system,” Abbott said. “No state in America has been adding more parkland than what I’ve done and what Texas has done; I want to continue to preserve our parkland in the state of Texas.”
Texas Monthly reported that the Parks and Wildlife commission, which is composed of members appointed by Abbott, were planning to discuss the sale of 1,300 acres of public land in Cameron County during a closed-door portion of their Nov. 5 commission meeting.
SpaceX is reportedly the potential buyer of the land that includes Boca Chica State Park.
Neither SpaceX nor the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department immediately commented on the potential of a sale. Cameron County officials were not available for comment.
In a statement to Texas Monthly, Stephanie Garcia, a Parks and Wildlife spokesperson, said: “The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission is not considering the sale of the Boca Chica property at its November meeting.”
Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, spoke out against the potential sale and criticized Abbott’s relationship with SpaceX owner Elon Musk.
“Like so many families in the Valley, I spent my summers at Boca Chica Beach,” said Hinojosa, a native of Brownsville, which is located about 18 miles west of the beach. “Now, after 12 years of selling out Texas to his corporate donors and making working people foot the bill, Greg Abbott is handing over our land to the world’s only trillionaire. Let me be clear: Texas is not for sale.”
The Texas Parks and Wildlife commission had previously approved a land swap deal with SpaceX in 2024 in which the department would have transferred 43 acres from Boca Chica State Park to the company in exchange for 477 acres adjacent to Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.
SpaceX, however, later withdrew from the deal.
More than 1,055 acres of land along the Gulf Coast comprises Boca Chica State Park, located just three miles north from the mouth of the Rio Grande.
Consisting of dunes, marshes and coastal grassland, the largely undeveloped area was chosen by SpaceX to be the location of a test site for rocket launches in 2014 due to its remote location.
Since then, SpaceX has purchased privately owned land in the area for future development and to minimize potential land use conflicts.
However, environmental activists have criticized SpaceX’s presence in the area, arguing that the company’s rocket launches have had negative impacts to the environment and the wildlife.
They’ve also sued the state and federal government in an attempt to prevent SpaceX from obtaining more land in the area. Those efforts have been largely unsuccessful.
Last month, a federal judge denied the groups’ attempts to prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from giving SpaceX 715 acres of land in a nearby wildlife refuge in exchange for 683 acres of private land that is adjacent to another refuge.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.