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Frog Friendly Biologists Help the United States Golf Association Go Green Few sights can match the grandeur of golf's greatest players on the game's greatest holes. Picture, for example, Tiger Woods, framed by a bank of incandescent azaleas, coolly contemplating the long approach to Augusta's luminous 13th green. Or a wind-tussled Phil Mickelson addressing the ball on the 17th tee at Pebble Beach, misted by the spray of an angry sea. Yet even the most naïve among us recognize that, for all their verdant glory, these majestic golfscapes like any successful grooming of the land represent a triumph of artifice over the natural order. Fact is, nature pays a heavy price for the construction and maintenance of our golfing Arcadias. Keeping fairways lush and greens green on even a municipal course, much less a championship venue, requires millions of gallons of water and a toxic stew of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Because players covet long holes in dramatic settings, course development often involves the loss of open spaces and wildlife habitat. Thanks mostly to the dogged effort of environmentalists, the United States Golf Association, the game's American governing body, has in recent years sought to lessen its ecological footprint. One tactic involves planting turf grasses better suited to local conditions. Another involves designing courses that complement, rather than compete with, the lay of the land. A third involves exploring how golf courses might actually promote, rather than hinder, the survival prospects of various threatened species. Ray Semlitsch, Curators' professor of biology at MU and the "amphibian advocate" profiled in Illumination's Spring 2004 edition, is one of the scientists the USGA has asked to explore this last approach. So far, he's bullish on the prospect. "There are more than 17,000 golf courses in the United States," Semlitsch says. "These managed green spaces aren't surrogates for protected land and ecosystems, but they can include suitable habitat for species native to the area. Golf courses could act as nature sanctuaries if managed properly." Semlitsch and two colleagues, Miami University's Michelle Boone and J. Russell Bodie from Audubon International, outlined their ideas for better management in a paper for the USGA's Turfgrass and Environmental Research Online. These include buffering aquatic habitats from chemical runoff, surrounding wetland areas with 150 to 300 meters of forest or natural grassland, and creating a diversity of pond types that mimic natural wetlands. Semlitsch and Boone elaborated on these recommendations in a more recent investigation. Surprisingly, the scientists found that completely drying golf course ponds in the late summer or early fall was key to boosting amphibian populations. "It's a hard concept for people to understand, but non-permanent wetlands are more natural than permanent wetlands," says Semlitsch. "Most natural wetlands dry for some periods of time, and the species that live in them are well-adapted for this." The study was funded in part by the USGA and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. It will be published later this year by the journal Conservation Biology. |
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Published by the Office of Research. ©2008 Curators of the University of Missouri. Click here to contact the editor.
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