Certification offers an efficient way to work directly with members regarding their unique property while also providing guidance and motivation to take action on key environmental components and promote environmental sustainability.
By Frank LaVardera, Audubon International Director of Environmental Programs for Golf
This year, Audubon International celebrates 35 years of helping golf courses, resorts, hotels, parks, and other entities become more environmentally sustainable through several certification programs.
Our “headliner” Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program (ACSP) has led the way for nearly three decades. More than 2,300 properties worldwide have achieved and maintain certification, with more coming on board every year. Certification offers an efficient way to work directly with members regarding their unique property while also providing guidance and motivation to take action on key environmental components and promote environmental sustainability.
Golf remains the linchpin of what we do, and we’re often asked what formal steps are necessary for ACSP for Golf certification. Basically, it’s a six-part process that’s designed and implemented in close partnership with Audubon International’s experts, including a site visit.
First up is the Site Assessment and Environmental Plan, which provides us with physical information about the property and gives the course a baseline of needs, assets and challenges so they can move forward with each of the other five certification components. This initial step helps golf course superintendents, maintenance staff and others identify projects and activities they need to implement to responsibly care for the land, water, wildlife, and natural resources – and gain approval of the other five certification components.
From there, the five fundamental “on the ground” components come into play, which each course tackles in whatever order works best for its setting and circumstances. These are Wildlife and Habitat Management, Chemical Use Reduction and Safety, Water Conservation, Water Quality Management, and Outreach and Education. Each involves a detailed, multi-pronged collection of information and best practices developed with the input of golf course superintendents, golf industry experts, university researchers, and environmental professionals from diverse backgrounds.
Let’s take a brief look at each of these five components.
Wildlife and Habitat Management
Enhancing existing natural habitats and landscaping on the golf course helps promote wildlife and biodiversity conservation. Golf courses vary greatly in location, size, and layout and coexist with countless wildlife species and habitats. All are crucial to planning and implementing appropriate practices. Specific practices include building nesting boxes or other structures, when appropriate, to enhance nesting sites for birds or bats; maintaining natural wildlife habitat on all minimally used portions of the property; naturalizing at least 50% of out-of-play shorelines with emergent aquatic and shoreline plants; and restoring degraded habitats, such as eroded slopes, compacted soils, polluted water sources, or areas overrun with invasive exotic species.
Chemical Use Reduction and Safety
This includes employing and maintaining best management practices and integrated pest management techniques to ensure safe storage, application, and handling of chemicals and reduce actual and potential environmental contamination. Key to this component is training maintenance staff in the basic tenets of integrated pest management and educating them about the risks to human health and the environment associated with chemical use, storage, and disposal, potential for acute and chronic health problems, degraded water quality and soil health, and negative impacts to wildlife and habitats. Maintenance crews also learn to improve soil health by utilizing proper cultural practices such as amending organic content, aerating, and improving water infiltration.
Water Conservation
Making sure irrigation equipment maximizes efficiency and minimizes waste is the core goal of this component in concert with employing water-saving irrigation practices. Maintenance teams prioritize water usage and learn to employ consistent conservation techniques — identifying water sources used for irrigation, operating and managing irrigation systems correctly, and maintaining soils and turfgrass to maximize water absorption and reduce runoff.
Water Quality Management
Protecting the health and integrity of water resources is central to the ACSP for Golf ethic. Water quality monitoring is a valuable tool for evaluating whether management practices are working. When best practices are put in action, prioritizing the protection of water quality, both on and off the golf course, and training staff to employ those practices every day WILL prevent a decrease in quality for waters leaving the course. Identifying a course’s specific watershed, including where surface water comes from and where runoff goes after leaving the property, is a critical part of the process.
Outreach and Education
Whether an ACSP for Golf candidate is a private, public or resort course, the buy-in of its member or customer — the golfer — for its environmental management program is essential to long-term success. Audubon International helps each member course’s staff develop a variety of education and outreach activities to communicate with patrons and community members and invite participation where appropriate. To achieve certification, every course is required to form a Resource Advisory Group to help plan and implement environmental projects and educational efforts. Representatives from the golf course, as well as the local community, often participate to offer advice or volunteer assistance.
“The Outreach and Education component sets our programs apart from many other types of certifications that are out there,” says Audubon International CEO Christine Kane. “We require outreach and education because we want you to talk about what you’re doing, let your community know, let your members know. This will hopefully influence others to do the same thing, whether it’s another business or someone in a home on your own property. It’s important to get the word out on many levels — that there is movement, there are things happening near to home, and that you’re helping address the larger global issues that we talk about and hear about every day.”
ACSP for Golf has won awards as a top-notch certification program, for several reasons. It’s comprehensive. It’s fact-based. It yields impressive and sustainable results for every member. It’s interactive. And it’s a valuable partnership built on a goal we all cherish – to make sure the great game of golf lives and grows in an environmentally sustainable manner to benefit everyone, and the earth itself.
For more on the ACSP for Golf and all our certification programs, visit www.auduboninternational.org.
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