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The local council planners in Aberdeenshire, Scotland granted full permission for another 18-hole golf course on the Menie estate that will be named the MacLeod course, after the President’s mother. Conservationists have opposed the plan, citing how the first course built in 2012 has badly damaged a delicate dunes system on the Scottish coast. But the local council said that the continued development will contribute significant social and economic benefits.
Donald Trump has said he might leave the U.S. if he loses the White House in the November election, The Guardian reported. If so, he has been handed a new option for where to eke out his final days—a new Trump Organization golf club in Aberdeenshire, Scotland that has been given final approval by the local council planners and would be the second Trump property on the area’s Menie estate.
If President Trump does choose such an option, however, he can expect a robust welcome from conservationists, The Guardian noted, who will raise objections to the effect that building the course could have on the area’s delicate environment, citing how the construction in 2012 of Trump International Golf Links Scotland on the Menie estate, north of Aberdeen has been blamed for badly damaging the dunes system at the nearby Foveran Links, which has been designated as a site of specific scientific interest (SSSI).
Conservation experts had urged the Aberdeenshire council to withhold planning permission for the second golf course at Menie that the Trump Organization had asked to build, The Guardian reported. But in September of 2019, local councilors ignored their warnings and recommended the proposal be given the go-ahead.
Since then, campaigners had pressed the Aberdeenshire council planning service to overturn that decision, The Guardian reported. But on October 16th, the council announced it had decided to go ahead and grant full planning permission for the new course, claiming it “will contribute towards the significant social and economic benefits expected to be delivered by the wider development proposals within the Menie estate.”
This optimism is not shared by conservationists, The Guardian reported, who say that the decision means Foveran Links’ SSSI status, given because of its unusual shifting sands and diverse plant life, will have to be removed completely in the next few months.
“This decision gives a green light to the Trump Organization to further vandalize and destroy Scotland’s natural heritage,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “Aberdeenshire council and the Scottish government have ignored the objections of Scottish Natural Heritage about potential further damage to world-famous sand dunes that are supposed to be protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, but which have already been partially destroyed by the building of the first golf course.”
The new 18-hole course will be known as the MacLeod course after President Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born and brought up on the Hebridean island of Lewis before emigrating to New York, The Guardian reported. The course will be built to the south and west of the original one.
The Trump Organization originally won approval for a “Trump estate” encompassing the protected dunes through a pledge to create up to 6,000 jobs by building a five-star hotel with 450 rooms, along with shops, a sports complex, timeshare flats, two golf courses and housing estates, The Guardian reported. But so far only one 18-hole course has been constructed that is open seven months a year, along with a practice range and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop. The 200-acre property’s Menie Manor House has also been converted into a boutique hotel with 16 rooms.
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