Golf
and the Environment
Beyond Pesticides' work on golf and the environment continues to be an important strategy for outreach to the land area with one of the most highly concentrated per acre use of pesticides. The extensive use of pesticides on golf courses raises serious questions about people's toxic exposure, drift over neighboring communities, water contamination, and effects on wildlife and sensitive ecosystems.
Beyond Pesticides serves on a steering committee that seeks to develop a collaborative strategy with the golf course industry in an effort to effect change. This group developed the Environmental Principles for Golf and the Environment. Increasingly, players and golf course managers are asking the right questions and looking for answers that result in meaningful reductions in pesticide use.
In
what it calls the most important article it has ever published, Golf
Digest in its May 2008 issue (pp 196-232) published an article, "How
Green
is Golf?," which asks the hard questions about the environmental
impact of golf in a series of in-depth interviews, including a builder,
golf course superintendent, regulator, environmentalist and activist -
Beyond Pesticides executive director, Jay Feldman (read Jay's
interview).
The article spans a range of opinions on water usage, pesticide contamination, and management practices, with general agreement that golfer expectations and management practices must move and are moving in an environmental direction, citing important ways in which attitudes and understanding must change.
Read about this article on Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog, "Experts Discuss the Greening of Golf Courses," April 17, 2008.