A natural winner: Bonita Bay - Brief Article

Golf Digest, March, 2000 by Mike Stachura

It's not often that a golf course inspires a change in local environmental policies that encourages more golf course development. But that's exactly what happened in Lee County, Fla., where the Bonita Bay Club has set standards for land planning and environmental preservation. For that and its continuing efforts to show how golf course development can coexist with and enhance the environment, Bonita Bay Club in Bonita Springs, Fla., receives Golf Digest's annual Environmental Leader in Golf award.

Planned along Florida's ecologically sensitive Gulf Coast in the early 1980s--well before the environmental movement gained momentum in the golf industry--the Bonita Bay community is a 2,400-acre development that includes five golf courses. Three courses are on site and two sit on a 1,440-acre plot that is designated to be free of residential development. Approximately 25 percent of the total site acreage is set aside as natural preserves.

Its environmental efforts include establishing an integrated pest-management program, recycling natural materials, leaving snag trees undisturbed to provide habitat, restricting pesticide application anywhere on the property, making hand-pulling of weeds standard procedure, planting native grasses to reduce maintenance and other grasses to provide for wildlife, and adjusting irrigation practices to save nearly 11 million gallons of water a year.

Several courses earned honorable mention status this year: Bay Harbor Golf Club (Bay Harbor, Mich.); Cateechee Golf Club (Hartwell, Ga.); ThunderHawk Golf Course (Beach Park, Ill.); Lost Key Golf Club (Perdido Key, Fla.); Legacy Golf Course at Cragun's Resort (Brainerd, Minn.); and Chisholm Trail Golf Course (Abilene, Kan.).

RELATED ARTICLE: Our judges

Courtney Cuff (Friends of the Earth), Brock Evans (Defenders of Wildlife), Jay Feldman (National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides), Mike Hurdzan (golf course architect), Steve Mona (Golf Course Superintendents Association of America), Sharon Newsome (Physicians for Social Responsibility), Rick Norton (National Golf Foundation), Paul Portney (Resources for the Future), Roger Schiffman (Golf Digest), Jim Snow (U.S. Golf Association), Grant Spaeth (former USGA president), Reid Wilson (U.S. EPA).