Creatures Of Habitat. Mark Hengesbaugh. Published by Utah State University Press. For additional information about this book

Transcription

1 Creatures Of Habitat Mark Hengesbaugh Published by Utah State University Press Hengesbaugh, Mark. Creatures Of Habitat: The Changing Nature of Wildlife and Wild Places in Utah and the Intermountain West. Logan: Utah State University Press, Project MUSE., For additional information about this book No institutional affiliation (28 Dec :55 GMT)

2 CHAPTER NINE Can Utah s golf courses go green? Chemical dependency is hard to kick. Take your local golf course s putting green. It s mowed down to a tenth of an inch tall. The stubble is seared by the sun, dried by wind, and stomped by humans in plaid pants. Underground, its unnaturally shallow roots are vulnerable to mold, fungus, and insects. Because a putting green is constantly on the ragged edge of survival, without regular fixes of fertilizer, fungicides, and insecticides, it s deader than Astro-Turf. It s not just the greens either. In Utah, manicured tees and fairways planted with nonnative bluegrass require constant chemical maintenance as well. Without it, they won t have the intense green color and short, smooth turf golfers have come to expect from neighborhood courses. Can local golfers change their expectations and accept a more natural setting that s less chemically dependent? It s tough to change golfers attitudes when they see these nice green courses on television, says William Howard Neff, a golf course architect in Sandy, Utah. Part of the cost of building a golf course is matching what local golfers see on TV. With emerald fairways and sapphire-blue ornamental ponds, classic golf courses like Georgia s Augusta National are Disneyesque caricatures of nature. It wasn t always this way. Golf began as an unassuming, Scottish working-class game. Courses were pastures and open fields of unruly native grass. Hazards were sandy dunes and wild marshes. Even today, Scotland s natural golf courses, like St. Andrews, are less manicured and use fewer chemicals than courses in the U.S. Likewise, American golf course builders used to work with the shape and vegetation of the natural landscape. In the 109

3 1960s though, builders and architects began earthmoving to give their golf courses more dramatic layouts. As builders bulldozed hills and ponds, they had to use herbicides to control the weeds that thrive on disturbed landscape. They replanted with nonnative grass and ornamental vegetation that requires a regular fix of fertilizer, fungicides, and insecticides in order to thrive. How bad did it get? Greenskeepers are more cautious today, but as recently as 1993 a course may have sprayed 21 different herbicides, 20 fungicides, and 8 insecticides. A typical course applied 18 pounds of pesticides per acre each year seven times the amount used on farmland. Rain and sprinkling carry those chemicals into groundwater, wetlands, and rivers. A 1993 Golf magazine article cautioned players to Clean your shoes immediately after your round and take a shower, especially if you ve been wearing shorts... Clean golf balls with a towel, not your hands... Don t chew on tees. Clearly, it was time for golf to check into its own chemical-dependency rehab program. The trend in the game now is to take a minimal approach toward altering the natural landscape, using nonnative grass, and applying chemical maintenance, reports Mark Passey, Southwest representative of the U.S. Golf Association. Environmental awareness in the industry is growing, he said. After all, most golfers are environmentalists too. Many environmentalists are golfers; one Sierra Club member in six is a golfer, a national poll revealed. Golf course thirst for scarce, tax-subsidized Western water is another raw issue. A Southwestern golf course, like one in St. George, Las Vegas, or Phoenix, may use over 400 million gallons of water a year. But a new golf course design, called links, reduces the total percentage of area of the course made up of tees, fairways, and greens. Those three features of a course are planted with nonnative grasses, like bluegrass, and so require intensive chemical maintenance and watering. A links-designed course may have up to three-quarters of its 150 to 200 acres in native grass and other local vegetation. Salt Lake s Wingpointe golf course, near the Salt Lake International Airport, is an example of a links course that s planted with mostly native grasses and so uses less water. The intensively maintained parts of a links course the tees, fairways, and greens require about two inches of water a week, course designer Neff points out. The other parts, the roughs and far roughs with native 110 CREATURES OF HABITAT

4 Utah golf course. DAN MILLER grasses, may take a half inch of water or will survive on what nature gives them. Neff says he is using salt grasses and alkali grasses in the roughs of a course in Syracuse, near the Great Salt Lake. He also points out that the recent 18-hole addition to Mountain Dell golf course, which is built in a watershed, was designed to drain into an artificial wetland for filtering. Reducing water and chemical use by growing mostly native grasses and plants is a beginning step. But, as open green-space, golf courses also have the opportunity to provide habitat for the native bird and animal species displaced by humanity s relentless wildlife habitat destruction. Wildlinks, a program launched by the U.S. Golf Association in 1996, is the game s first methodical look at its relationship with wildlife and habitat. Wildlinks will inform golf course builders and owners of ways to preserve and protect habitat on golf courses. Meanwhile, the Audubon Society of New York established a set of criteria for Earth-friendly golf courses. The idea is popular. 111

5 About 15 percent of U.S. golf courses have applied for Audubon certification, among them are four Utah courses, including Homestead in Midway and Willow Creek in Sandy. Some local golf courses, such as Wingpointe, were built to rehabilitate already-damaged landscape. Wingpointe sits over the old Salt Lake City landfill and brings a former eyesore back into productive use. For plants and animals, better a golf course than a shopping mall. But the best habitat for native plants and animals is one left in its natural state. Golf course pesticides eliminate bugs that native birds and animals feed on; they are also passed up the food chain to predators and to humans. Some golf course greenskeepers are experimenting with an integrated pest management program. It employs various holistic techniques, such as using bugs to eat other bugs and using diluted bleach to reduce fungi, rather than applying fullstrength chemicals. Today, club owners may tell golfers to spray themselves with insect repellent in the clubhouse so greenskeepers don t have to spray the entire golf course with pesticide as frequently. In addition, courses can apply organic fertilizer, such as composted turkey manure, for a slowergreening, but biodegradable, grass food. It remains to be seen whether local golfers are willing to adjust to brown grass during certain times of year. Also, longer, rougher native grasses may cost strokes or lost golf balls, and those bird-friendly buffers of thick vegetation around water hazards will eliminate dramatic, edge-of-water shots. But if local golfers can learn to play on courses that reduce the spread of chemicals in drinking water and encourage native birds and animals to visit, it s a small price to pay. Nobody said rehab was easy. 112 CREATURES OF HABITAT