JOYFUL PIECE #35

Restoring our planet...

Photo of the Celebration Golf Course in Orlando, Florida - by https://www.vacome.com/ and https://www.reunionvacationhomes.com/, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Golf courses can be beautiful. Yet they have an unreal, manufactured feel if you wish to connect with nature.

Would it not be nice to convert abandoned golf courses to community green spaces, to nature preserves, to wetlands and parks? A golf course encompasses hundreds of acres. Can we imagine instead a community wildlife preserve where native species once abundant return to enrich our lives?

Well, a growing number of closed golf courses are being bought and transformed into wildlife preserves by municipalities and non-profits. We can begin the process of healing the land that we have damaged for a long time.

Golf courses are a huge burden on our environment. They require thousands of gallons of daily irrigation. Golf courses are heavily fertilized to encourage the non-native grasses that cover them. The grasses are then mowed regularly, adding greenhouse gases to the environment. And they are treated with pesticides and rodenticides that directly kill the “pests” and “rodents” such as gophers, squirrels, rabbits. As a result of eliminating these creatures the many beautiful predators, such as snakes, hawks, owls, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, lynxes, wolves, and others that depend on them for subsistence are also killed.

Citizens are increasingly recognizing the value to the community of restored environments where they can unwind, enjoy the wildlife even as groundwaters are restored and wetlands thrive again.

There is joy in land restoration and the return of wildlife. Read this article in the New York Times, and learn about the opportunities to bring wildlife back right here in the United States where 42% of worldwide golf courses reside. Consider the possibilities…

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