Dear Glenn
Interesting concept of Eco-labelling golfcourses like tropical timber. The
creteria for highest score should be
European layout and design
Occuping former farmland instead of former bird habitat
Improving bird habitat by creating artifical wetlands
Using less and less harmfull pesticides
Using less machinery by maintaining rough
Using less fertilizers.
The European design is far better than the courses established on the Gold
Coast.
A links course is also more difficult and challinging for golfers.
I used to play on Bayview golf course near Pittwater. My Handicap climbed as
I was distracted by many species of birds such as Channel billed Cuckoo,
Scaly breasted Lorikeet, Australian Crake, Brown and Gray Goshawks,
White-headed Pigeon, Leaden Flycatcher, Scarlet Honeyeater. Unfortunally
parts of the course was established in former Mangrove Habitats in the
sixties and consequently suffered from bogging during the wet periods in
1988-1989. The comitte had to raise the fees from 400 to 800 dollars in
order to drain the course and fill land up. The lesson to golf designers
such as the "shark" would be that it is also ecomically expensive to clear
mangroves for golfing purposes.
At 20.24 06-06-97 +1000, you wrote:
>
>I have I alreadfy sent this? Apologises if so?!
>----------
>> As a once promising golfer (before I became the size of an elephant and
>> joined conservation for protection), I can remember the sixties and the
>> crises when golf-courses were actually being lost (believe it or not, but
>> golf only hit its strokes in the 70s). I distinctly remember an article -
>> in about 1967 in an American golfing magazine - titled: "Ecology crisis"
>> (quaint how `conservationists' were once called `ecologists'). Surprising
>> to us today, many golf courses were lost in that decade to housing
>> developments, and industrial estates, because the land was worth more
>used
>> that way. Wouldn't it be just a little something if some of those courses
>> were still around today in some of those highly developed areas? (sensu
>> Nevil Amos's posting).
>>
>> If the tendency is towards more manicured courses, this could be quite
>> easily changed with a friendly campaign towards golfing clubs and their
>> associations. Many golfers view their game as a walk with nature. The
>> problem is, as always, who will do the campaign?
>>
>> It would be a good one for BIRDS AUSTRALIA.
>> Scenario: prepare minimum guidelines and a Certificate for Quality
>> Assurance for a "BIODIVERSITY LINKS" (the pun is intended and not
>> unattractive). And, each year, with a lot of bell-ringing, give an award
>to
>> a links that does an outstanding effort in bird-friendly design.
>>
>> But don't put one's nose in the air in reacting to the idea. I too
>remember
>> a Queensland ALP Government giving Woodwark Bay, a part of a National
>Park,
>> to a Japanese Company for a golf course. And I also remember the sleaze
>> deal when a Liberal Brisbane City Council gave Chandler Park to the posh
>> Indooroopilly Golf Club. However, I, for one, detest people who let
>> sentiment get in the way of winning the next fight - almost as much as I
>> loathe developers who build unneeded golf courses.
>>
>> Glen J. Ingram
>> Brisbane, Australia.
>>
>>
>> "He was a bold man that first ate an oyster" Jonathan Swift.
>>
>>
>
>
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