Choosing eco-friendly golf resorts makes a difference
A lush, green golf course can be the most relaxing backdrop for an event, but is it a sustainable one? While these courses can make or break a property, they also use a lot of natural resources. According to an article in Golf Digest, U.S. golf courses use an average of 300,000 gallons of water a day. They’re also accomplices in destroying wildlife habitats and contaminating water, due to the amount of pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants being pumped into the grass to create such a pure green. Luckily, there are some properties that are creating environmental standards.
The Resort at the Mountain in Welches, Ore., for example, has established several projects and practices in the past 20 years to keep its resort sustainable. One of its first was the Wee Burn Stream Restoration Project. When the resort’s 27-hole golf course, The Courses, was initially built in the early 1900s, it was designed with the Wee Burn tributary running right through it. However, it soon became an unsuitable habitat for the sustained survival of coho and steelhead salmon. Then, 10 years later, three small dams were built, preventing the fish from finding a habitat to spawn eggs. Needless to say, those fish disappeared.
In 1995, The Resort formed a partnership with Wolftree and the Mt. Hood National Forest to help enhance the fish habitat along the Salmon River and its tributaries, which includes the Wee Burn. To create a Salmon Habitat in the tributary again, the resort needed to create fish access, dredge the pond, plant thousands of native trees and shrubs, add hundreds of natural logs and boulders to the stream, and create another meander pattern for the stream. Countless hours of labor and $350,000 later, wild coho and salmon returned to the tributary in the late 1990s.
As a result, The Courses at the Resort at the Mountain received recognition as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary in 2002 for its environmental excellence in five categories: Wildlife and Habitat Management, Outreach and Education, Integrated Pest Management, Water Conservation and Water Quality Management. It is one of only 2,300 golf courses certified out of the 16,000 in the United States.
The resort is now working on another project to preserve and protect the natural resources on Mt. Hood: the Salmon River Side Channel Enhancement Project. Harsh floods in 1996 and 1999 caused erosion that created a lateral migration of the river. To stop further erosion and create a still-better habitat for the coho and steelhead, the volunteers of the project will place about 60, 35-foot logs and about 40–50 boulders into the side channel.
As our world and its habitats continue to change, more consideration goes into how various practices, habits and hobbies will affect our environment. That same consideration can be applied to meeting planning by choosing sustainable resorts, activities, F&B, lighting and more. Golf resorts can be an environmental choice if you find properties that use sustainable practices on and off the green.
For a list of Audubon International Certified Golf Courses, click here.