viernes, febrero 14

After their closure, these golf courses became wild

There was shaggy grass in one sandbox and wooden blocks and a toy castle in another, evidence of children at play. People were walking their dogs on the fairway, which looked rather run down and unkempt. It was to be expected.

Nowadays, these courses are mowed only twice a year and have not been sprayed with pesticides or rodenticides since 2018, when this 157-acre tract ceased to be the San Geronimo Golf Course and began his journey to the wilderness. or at least wilder, once again.

A small number of closed golf courses across the country have been purchased by land trusts, municipalities and nonprofit groups and transformed into nature preserves, parks and wetlands. Among them are sites in Detroit, Pennsylvania, Colorado, the Finger Lakes of upstate New York and at least four in California.

“We quickly recognized the high value of restoration, the conservation value and the recreational value of public access,” said Guillermo Rodriguez, California state director at the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which purchased the San Geronimo course in Marin County for $8.9 million. in 2018 and renamed it San Geronimo Commons.

On a recent tour of land in the San Geronimo Valley, less than an hour’s drive north of San Francisco, Mr. Rodriguez pointed out the hills that serve as habitat for wildlife, including hawks. who were flying over. “On either side you have public land,” he said. “It was the missing link.”

The restoration of the San Geronimo grounds is still underway. Floodplains will be reconnected and a fish barrier has been removed, allowing access to more robust migration and breeding grounds for threatened coho salmon and steelhead. Trails are planned that would bypass sensitive habitats, making the course a publicly accessible ecological life raft, very different from its days as a golf course.

“It’s a great, beautiful place,” said Charles Esposito, 76, a retiree who was enjoying a recent walk. «I love it.»

In recent years, the golf industry has taken steps to ease its environmental footprint by using less water, planting pollinator-friendly plants and reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

Yet the resources and chemicals required for pristine emerald turf have made the sport the bane of environmentalists. The approximately 16,000 golf courses in the United States use 1.5 billion gallons of water per day, according to the United States Golf Association, and are collectively treated with 100,000 tons of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium per year .

The United States has more golf courses than McDonald’s locations and also more than any other country, accounting for about 42 percent of all golf courses in the world, according to the National Golf Foundation.

This oversupply, coupled with development pressures, has led to more golf courses closing than opening since 2006. Return to nature, or some version of it, is still relatively rare for older golf courses, most of which end up in the hands of commercial or residential developers, according to the National Golf Foundation. A recent example is a former 36-hole golf course in New Hampshire that Target purchased for nearly $122 million in 2023 to build a new distribution center.

For a golf course to become a public green space, an unlikely set of stars must align. There must be a willing seller and, more importantly, a conservation-minded buyer who can afford not only to purchase the land, but also to restore it. According to Eric Bosman, an urban planner with design and planning firm Kimley-Horne, 28 former courses were transformed into public green spaces between 2010 and October 2022.

But that number appears to be slowly increasing. In 2023, the former Cedar View Golf Course, located on the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York, was purchased by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. Another nonprofit, the West Lake Art Conservation Center, plans to turn some 230 acres of the shuttered Lakeview Golf & Country Club in Owasco into a nature preserve.

Although rewilding a golf course may disappoint players, it can bring great benefits to animals, plants and humans.

A few hundred miles south of San Geronimo, on a tract of land owned by the University of California, Santa Barbara, the 64 acres that once housed the Ocean Meadows Golf Course are now an estuary surrounded by meadows, salt marshes and coastal sage scrub islands.

The previous owner had considered selling the course to a real estate developer, but the 2008 recession thwarted that, according to Lisa Stratton, director of ecosystem management at the university’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration. who manages the land. Students at the school sought help from the Trust for Public Land, which purchased the property for $7 million in 2013 and donated it to the university.

Extensive restoration of the Santa Barbara site took years and was funded by $16 million in local, state and federal grants. That included moving 350,000 cubic yards of dirt that golf course developers had salvaged from nearby mesas and pushed atop wetlands to create the course decades ago. Rehabilitated wetlands now reduce flood risks and protect against sea level rise, Dr Stratton said. The change also meant neighboring homes were no longer in a federal flood zone. Without golf balls whizzing overhead, the land became a habitat for migratory shorebirds, including black-necked stilts, greater yellowlegs and sandpipers, and even attracted the secretive American bittern. Newly installed underground rock structures provide habitat for rabbits, ground squirrels, mice and burrowing owls.

Two federally endangered plants, Ventura swamp vetch and salt marsh bird’s bill, were also established at the site, part of an effort to move some plants north while that their natural habitats become too hot. University students participated in the restoration work and monitored hundreds of animal species.

The public has also embraced the property. Last October, members of the Chumash tribe conducted a cultural burn of part of the prairie, and the site attracts bird watchers and children on bikes, who use its trails to get to school.

“What we learned is how important these areas are to people; that emotionally and psychologically they need it,” Dr. Stratton said.

But transformations do not always happen smoothly. After the Trust for Public Land purchased the San Geronimo site, it planned to sell it to Marin County. But a group of local golf advocates sued to block the county’s purchase, saying an environmental analysis had not been completed. They also proposed a ballot measure to limit what the county could do with the land. It was defeated, with about 70 percent of San Geronimo voters opting to continue rewilding.

Although restoration was delayed, conservation easements were obtained for most of the site, preventing future development, and a new plan was developed for Marin County to acquire the land. The county plans to pay $4.9 million to the Trust for Public Land for a parcel where the clubhouse is located and build a fire station there, according to Dennis Rodoni, the county supervisor. The Trust for Public Land then plans to transfer ownership of the remaining approximately 130 acres to the county.

In Palm Springs, some neighbors of the former Mesquite Golf & Country Club have resisted plans to restore the land to its natural state, saying they prefer the view provided by a well-maintained 18-hole championship course.

“We used to have a really nice view that looked across the golf course to the mountains,” said Don Olness, who serves on the homeowners’ association board of an adjacent condominium complex. But since the Oswit Land Trust purchased the golf course for $9 million in 2022, the area has filled with weeds, dead trees and fallen branches, he said. “It’s basically a neglected area,” Mr. Olness said.

Citing a lease agreement with the golf course’s owners, the homeowners’ association sued to temporarily halt any changes made by the land trust, which purchased the course with a donation from Brad Prescott, a philanthropist , and renamed it Prescott Preserve.

Jane Garrison, founder and executive director of the land trust, said the current lawsuit prevents the trust from accessing a multimillion-dollar grant needed to properly restore the land. But of the trust’s five properties, Prescott Preserve quickly became the most popular.

The trust has removed the poison from the course’s maintenance shed, as well as poison and gopher traps located throughout the site, Ms Garrison said. She and her colleagues discovered dead rabbits and owls, and an examination confirmed that a ground squirrel had died after consuming rodenticide, which makes predators such as coyotes and bobcats susceptible to mange.

“When you remove all the poison and stop that cycle, you give these species a chance to recover,” Ms. Garrison said.

Although restoration is only just beginning, wild flowers and plants have already reappeared, she said. Approximately 100 native trees, including desert willow, ironwood and mesquite, were donated by a local nursery and planted. THE Trust decided to maintain ponds on site with recycled water, as climate change has made it difficult for wildlife to access water.

The group hopes to acquire more golf courses in Palm Springs, which, although located in a desert, is home to many courses. “When the land disappears, it’s gone forever, once they build condos,” Ms. Garrison. “But when you save it, it’s saved forever. You can’t put a price on that. »