My home course—and indeed, several courses in the area—bill themselves as Audubon bird and wildlife sanctuaries. I’ve always thought that was a good thing, but it apparently is not enough for the environmentalist wackos.
“A golf course is still development,” says Eric Antebi, national spokesperson for the Sierra Club. “It is not part of the natural landscape.”
He’s right, of course. They’re not “natural. But trust me, when they decide to close my local club, it won’t be so they can let it return to a natural state. It’ll be turned into a condo development with an attached strip mall and acres of asphalt parking lot. I don’t know how that will be an improvement.
The Audubon societ agrees:
“We work with anyone who wants to move their businesses in a more sustainable direction,” says Joellen Zeh, programs manager for Audubon’s Cooperative Sanctuary Program. “Compared to strip malls and housing developments, golf courses are a lot more environmentally friendly.”
Acres of grass and trees and wildflowers are far better than asphalt any way you slice it.
Nonetheless, there apparently is a movement afoot to apply sustainable business practices to golf courses. In an article at the site called Lime, Paul Freibott writes about how golf courses are becoming more environmentally friendly without compromising the quality of the game or the experience.
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We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.