Can a golf course become a nature reserve?

Versión en español

In September 2020, the website Viajes National Geographic published the article Can a golf course become a nature reserve? where it was informed that PGA Catalunya Resort had been awarded as the resort more and better committed to sustainability and the natural protection in the whole planet.

The CEO of the resort started by hiring the biologist and landscaper Oriol Dalmau. He began by taking charge of a vegetable garden that supplied both the residents of the complex's homes and the kitchen of the restaurants and other services. The pest control needs of the venue, added to a commitment by the golf world to reduce the use of phytosanitary products to reduce the impact of these chemicals on the players, led Dalmau to make a series of environmental management proposals with which he convinced to the managers of the resort. Today the results have proved him right.

The first pillar on which the changes are based is water consumption. By law, filtered wastewater has to be used, and thanks to improved filter systems, a purity that brings life is achieved. As a clear example, the tortoises of the Mauremys Caspica variety that have moved from the Empordà wetlands to here seeking refuge. An ecosystem of aquatic plants and indigenous fish has flourished around them, making the lakes not just a challenge for golfers, but an explosion of life.

The second pillar is a flora that goes beyond the monoculture of grasses that nature experts have criticized so much. Oriol found here a mosaic landscape that favours the proliferation of small forest and aquatic ecosystems where birds such as kingfishers, gray herons or woodpeckers have found a home. A panorama that has only been concerned with preserving and encouraging animals and plants to find here a favorable environment to live.

And the third pillar is the drastic reduction in the use of phytosanitary products and chemicals, which in its day was a lesser and necessary evil on every golf course. At the heart of this measure is the welfare of the player, but it brings with it an obvious benefit to the environment. This is where Dalmau's magic comes in. To overcome this challenge, he began installing bat nesting boxes to fight mosquitoes at night, introduced native fish to eat their larvae, and attracted insectivorous birds to clean the trees. And all this letting nature regulate everything. In this line, his latest action has been to transfer this system to the young vineyard that is growing on the limits of the resort. The goal is to bring organic wine to its maximum expression. In every sense.

The Instituto Acuático de Cataluña has allowed the introduction of native species and in some way gives the resort a nature reserve treatment. Along these lines, Dalmau himself points to golf as a possible solution to the lack of resources in natural parks, since it is profitable and the impact of human beings is much less noisy and invasive than that of mass tourism that usually goes to ecosystems protected. Seeing the results in terms of proliferation of flora and fauna, the idea is not just another idea.

It is the demonstration that things can be done in another way. In Hacienda Riquelme too.

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Notes:
- The above text is an abstract from the aforementioned Viajes National Geographic article. Photos have also been taken from it.
- On June 26, 2002, El País Semanal published the artícle This is the first golf course in Spain converted into a nature reserve about the same topic.