Golf courses, despite occupying large green spaces, are not necessarily good for the environment. Land is often cleared to make way for a fairway and maintaining the pristine turf often requires a lot of water, regular mowing and the spraying of fertilizers and pesticides – none of which is good for biodiversity.
In the US, with the number of course closures outweighing new openings every year since 2006, some are questioning how we should use these huge spaces – and asking whether, instead of golf, nature should be left to run its course.
Conservation nonprofits and local authorities are looking to acquire golf courses that have been abandoned due to high maintenance costs, low player numbers or other reasons, and repurpose them into landscapes that boost biodiversity and build natural defenses against climate change.
My local muni used to have 3 courses. They closed 1 in 2019 and have left it open to the public as a park with no maintenance going into the greens. There are 5 miles of cart paths, now trails, and it connects to an adjacent park with an additional 2 miles of trails. The golf course is barely recognizable and it has been really cool to see it slowly getting reclaimed by nature. There are a significantly larger amount of birds, small mammals, and deer seen there than even just two years ago. I rarely take pictures there but here are a couple that do a decent job at showing how little it looks like a golf course anymore. Both pictures were taken this year.
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bees don’t like grass
Go throw some wild flower seed on there then. Just shitting on what other people like is a dumb way to go through internet comments.
I say this as a man born in Pinehurst, North Carolina: Let that goddamn retarded sport die a pathetic unmourned death.
Would love to see both golf and that ableist slur die in a fire.
Let that god-damned r-slur die a pathetic unmourned death.
Please don’t use the word death, it triggers me
Having compassion for people who have mental handicaps and family/friends of them is definitely worth mocking.
If I had said “stupid” “moronic” “idiotic” or “brain-dead” instead of “retarded” you wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. I’m sure you can find better things to do than arbitrarily police other people’s language on the internet, like chewing on the inside of your cheek or licking your bathroom sink drain pipe.
Golf courses, despite occupying large green spaces, are not necessarily good for the environment.
Bit of an understatement.
Golf, the sport of rich wastes of sperm, turns out to be not that great a thing to do to the planet.
Who’da thunk it, eh lads?
Nature is healing.
Uplifting? Literally just what happens when you stop mowing the grass
Well, these were golf courses… The uplifting part IS that they stopped mowing it to let it be used for better purposes
Ya I guess some people don’t understand how plants grow
Convert all golf courses to MTB trails!
