Conservation

The threat to golf:

The commercial revolution in professional golf with the rise of television money has encouraged the development of courses with fertilised fairways and over-watered greens. Quite understandably this threatens to create in the mind of the public that golf is un-ecological in its use of water, fertilisers and pesticides.

FineGolf’s  support for the ‘running’ game of golf in contrast to ‘target-golf’ is fundamentally conservationist. In collaboration with experts FineGolf has written a series of conservationist articles.  John Nicholson Associates, the UK’s leading independent environmental and habitat consultantcy has developed articles covering;  gorse, friend or foe?  downlands, and trees .

This positive education on conservation by FineGolf  goes alongside calling for, with clear recommendations,  environmental policy change by the government’s bodies on ‘sea defence’   and an important criticism of Golf Environment Organisation (GEO) ignoring of the weed/fine grasses dichotomy, which brings into question its own conservationism.

Water is a scarce resource, fine grasses conserve it.

Following the droughts in the mid 90s, even many Fine running-courses decided to install fairway watering systems and Jim Arthur Europe’s leading golf agronomist, who wrote the Bible of Greenkeeping “Practical Greenkeeping”  was not against this as they do usefully give greenkeepers more flexibility, even if it should be used sparingly to just keep the grass alive.

Green unfortunately became the buzz word:

It did though seem that lush target golf was carrying all before it in the 1990s and the credo “if it isn’t green, it must be dead” pervading golf at many levels. If ‘weed’ annual meadow grass (Poa annua) with its shallow roots goes brown then it is likely to be dead, but perennial fescue/browntop bent grasses with deep roots often go brown in a dry summer but can survive droughts and come back green with the first rain. Read the article of what happened at heathland de Pan GC and also the ‘Green illusion’ article by Norbert ‘the turf fox’ Lischka.

FineGolf’s ambition

..is to rebalance this dangerous ‘green activist’ philosophy and give confidence to golfers to support natural conservationist greenkeeping at their local clubs.

Well-managed golf courses cannot be accused of being polluters.  Traditional, austere greenkeeping minimises the need for watering and ensures that no pollution occurs from inorganic fertiliser and pesticide use. True greenkeeping sustainability means low inputs and it also lowers costs.

The rise in conservation consciousness should help this re-balancing but sometimes the ‘Anthropogenic global warming alarmists’ promote ignorant attitudes with – for example, ‘tree-huggers’  believing all trees are sacrosanct.

FineGolf  encourages clubs to have a clear conservationist policy that should be publicised, as for example Royal Ashdown Forest,  has done on its website.

Open heathland and downland ecology is worth fighting for:

The biggest conservation headache on heathland and downland is the invasion of scrub and seedling trees which, if not cleared (as they used to be by sheep grazing), transform the appearance and nature of the course from an open, dry environment to woodland. The roots and shade of trees particularly near greens, creates an environment in favour of ‘weed’ grasses which helps them to out-compete the indigenous natural perennial ‘fine’ grasses that are best for golf.  Read   John Nicholson’s   article on Downlands.

This encroachment can takes place over a long time and, therefore, people live with it and many of our heathland and downland courses are now heavily wooded.  The visionary clubs know that they have to continuously work at heathland regeneration if they are to help keep the ecological balance and stop the heathland features degenerating into woodland and parkland.

Gorse and buckthorn are two other invasive plants that also need control. READ John Nicholson’s article on gorse.

Heather is killed by being fertilised: The deciduous leaves of oaks and silver birch in the autumn blow under the heather, mulch down and fertilise.  It is a phenomenon that the Surrey and Berkshire heathland courses are trying to counteract.  Ignorant tree huggers can do much harm to the ecological balance.

The work being done at some of our finest heathland courses, Hankley Common,  Notts(Hollinwell), Delamere Forest and Walton Heath, with the regeneration of the heath and the removal of hundreds of trees, leads the way.

They have achieved this progressive policy by involving local conservation groups and communicating coherently with their memberships.