The company the state was trying to lure for a controversial spaceport project — SpaceX of California — may go to Texas instead.

WASHINGTON — In the long-running battle between spaceships and scrub-jays, the birds appear to be gaining the upper wing.

For more than a year, the state has led a controversial effort to build a launchpad inside the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, where the Florida scrub-jay lives with at least 15 other species that federal authorities consider threatened or endangered.

Environmentalists have fought the proposal for months, and now there are signs that the company the state was trying to lure — SpaceX of California — may go to Texas instead.

A federal review of the competing Texas site is near completion, and local media outlets have reported that SpaceX already has bought land in the area, though company officials did not confirm those transactions or respond to repeated requests seeking comment.

Though Florida officials admit that the state is an underdog in the fight, they contend that Spaceport Shiloh, named for an abandoned citrus town in the Cape Canaveral area, is worth fighting for — and not just for SpaceX.

"We are going ahead with Shiloh with or without SpaceX," said Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, a booster group for the aerospace industry.

As an alternate, Space Florida has looked at the Washington-based company Blue Origin, which has expressed an interest in launching its vehicles from Florida.

"We remain keenly interested in Shiloh, as well as potential commercial launch sites in Florida and other locations," said Robert Meyerson, president of Blue Origin, in a statement.

There's a big difference between SpaceX and Blue Origin, however.

SpaceX, led by Internet tycoon Elon Musk, already has made history by becoming the first commercial company to blast a spaceship to the International Space Station.

Blue Origin, started by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, is developing at a slower clip and has yet to put one of its vehicles into orbit.

That could mean fewer jobs, though even Shiloh supporters have said that attracting SpaceX would probably mean only a couple of hundred jobs.

Any space-related hiring is desperately needed on the Space Coast, which is recovering from NASA's 2011 retirement of the space shuttle and the thousands of jobs that ended when the last orbiter landed.

But environmental groups remain steadfastly opposed to the Shiloh site. As part of a review process overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration — which would license launches from Spaceport Shiloh — two public hearings are planned for next month. Environmentalists said they plan to show up in force to oppose the project.

"It's not very often that a showcase national wildlife refuge like Merritt Island is threatened by a proposal to cut piece out of the heart of it," said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon Florida.

The environmental group joined last summer with a coalition of other activists in asking that the U.S. Department of the Interior take a greater role in vetting the Spaceport Shiloh.

Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is part of the Interior Department, responded with a 38-page missive that spelled out several concerns the agency had with the proposed launch site.

Although Shiloh planners envision using only about 200 acres of the 140,000-acre refuge, officials with the wildlife service wrote that they still had a "substantial number of concerns" and asked that the FAA and Space Florida consider alternate sites.

These worries range from habitat destruction to harmful noise levels. In one example, the service warned that nine "bald eagle nesting territories" near the site might be abandoned because of activity at the launch site. Flight operations also could put marine life in the Indian River Lagoon at risk, wildlife officials wrote: "Increased vehicular traffic, exhaust, and drift from emissions and propellants … could negatively affect water quality."

DiBello, of Space Florida, said he was aware of the environmental issues but added that he was glad they were coming out now to give his group the time to address them.

"I never expected Shiloh to be easy, but this is the right thing to do for the state," he said.

mkmatthews@tribune.com or 202-824-8222