Minnesota: The Land of Golf

Golf courses are springing up everywhere. Each year in Minnesota, about 14 golf courses open or expand. What are the effects on the state's fish and wildlife habitat?

By C.B. Bylander

At the foot of Gull Lake sits a small, shallow pond near the intersection of Pine Beach Road and County Road 70 north of Brainerd.

For decades this pond--called Stephen's Lake--was barely noticeable from the road, its swampy and undeveloped shoreline hidden by oak, aspen, and low-growing brush. Today, the lake is visible because trees have been cut and cleared around it. They have been replaced with golf course fairways, tee boxes, and grand greens--greens designed to welcome a ball like an old friend.

The Legacy Courses at Cragun's Golf Resort are the work of Robert Trent Jones Jr., who wove bright stripes of green around dark forest and tawny wetlands. To round it out, he added splashes of sand where balls can land. And he put Stephen's Lake into play, though mostly as a treat for the eye.

People who pass this new tapestry of color and texture recognize it for what it is: evidence that the Brainerd Lakes area--home of The Classic, The Pines, The Preserve, Whitebirch, and the new Arnold Palmer course, Deacon's Lodge--is a rising star in the galaxy of golfing destinations. In fact, the area, long renowned as an angler's paradise, now has more golf holes--468--than fishing holes--465 lakes--because of unprecedented golf course growth during the past decade.

Golf is booming in Minnesota. On average, 14 courses open or expand each year. Today, an estimated 700,000 Minnesotans swing a club. So do another 700,000 visitors. Direct golf sales generate more than $456 million per year for the state's economy and provide the equivalent of 13,900 full-time jobs, according to the Minnesota Golf Association.

This is good news for the state's economy. Likewise, it's good for those whose favorite wildlife is the birdie and the eagle. But is it good news for the environment? What effect does new golf course development have on natural lands that had been forests or fields? There must be some effect--right?--for golf courses survive only because of a diet rich in land, water, herbicides, and pesticides, federally approved as they are.

The initial and most profound impact of a golf course comes when the developer chooses a site: What will the course replace--gravel pits, farms, natural areas, wilderness? Then, how a course is built and maintained determines the environmental impact of everyday operations.

Both government and golf course owners have addressed the effect of operations. Golf courses first go through the state of Minnesota's environmental review process and then must comply with Department of Natural Resources water appropriation permits. Working with local authorities, as well as the Pollution Control Agency, golf courses must meet land-use, pollution, wetland, water quality, zoning, and other regulatory requirements, which lessen harm to the environment. Among golf course operators, there is a trend toward what they call "environmental friendliness," which means reducing irrigation and application of chemicals and fertilizer, actions that can also reduce operating expenses.

More difficult to address are the issues surrounding land use--the choice of when and where to build. What follows is a minitour of new golf course development in Minnesota. So, grab your clubs and come along to look at some of the issues that state and local governments and society are facing.

Big Woods, Big Impact

The first stop is a strip of forest on the western edge of the Twin Cities that covers parts of Orono and Medina. Long ago, before these cities existed, this Hennepin County woodland was part of the Big Woods, a sprawling forest that covered 1.9 million acres from present-day St. Cloud to Mankato. Today, less than 1 percent of Hennepin County's Big Woods remains. And it is on a portion of this land--which recently displayed almost all the major characteristics of an undisturbed old-growth forest--that Spring Hill Golf Club opened this year.

In this case, the DNR's environmental review assessed the ecological impacts as significant, according to Bill Johnson, DNR environmental review specialist. Fairways, cart paths, and other course components reduce the ecological value of the site by fragmenting the forest. It is no longer Big Woods--a cool, deeply shaded environment beneath a high canopy of trees that evolved over centuries--but rather, as the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis called it, "another golf course with big trees."

"The irony, of course, is that remnants of the Big Woods are increasingly rare, and golf courses increasingly common," Johnson says. "Our recommendation to the city of Orono was that this site should not become a golf course. Why not use the 99 percent that isn't part of our ecological heritage rather than the 1 percent that is?"

The DNR's recommendation did not prevail. The city council authorized the project because it did not have regulations that prohibited the project, it viewed the golf course as less degrading to the Big Woods than housing, a number of adjacent property owners testified at city meetings in favor of the course, and no conservation group tried to buy it or take legal action to stop it. Nor was the state in a position to buy the land.

Said Mike Gaffron, Orono senior planning coordinator: "Development and protection issues are always tough. In this case, the city council weighed the environmental review, the public input, comments from neighbors, and everything else and came to the conclusion that development pressure isn't going to go away and that a golf course is less likely to have negative impacts than homes." So the city of Orono approved the course and pitched the ball back to the DNR.

"The city asked us to work with the developers to mitigate negative impacts," said Johnson. "We did meet. We walked the site together and had those conversations. But in the end, the project went ahead largely as designed. The ecological heart of those 43 acres is now where three different holes come together."

Most people will never see this site because membership is limited to those who have paid as much as $125,000 for the initiation fee, the highest price in Minnesota.

Will the world go on? Of course. But it will go on with a smaller natural heritage. This golf course is but one example of how development continually nibbles away at forests, steadily simplifying their composition. By making the landscape warmer and drier, the course reduces the habitat for flora and fauna, such as treefrogs and spring peepers, that rely on cool, moist areas to live. Forest fragmentation also has negative effects on birds such as the sharp-shinned hawk, red-shouldered hawk, and certain Neotropical songbird species.

So, a course such as this is likely a double bogey for nature with the loss of wildlife habitat, loss of an unusual plant community, greater use of herbicides, and the fragmentation of a once sizable block of Big Woods. It could have been worse: Even modest-density housing would have cleared as many trees, disrupted more land surface, and sealed over the soil with more asphalt and other impervious surfaces, increasing runoff--a definite triple bogey.

Different Is Good

Tour stop two is 12 miles east of St. Paul, where bulldozers are moving ground this summer to build Wynstone Golf Club, just north of Interstate 94. The 18-hole golf course will cover 185 acres of rolling land that had been the Horseshoe Lake Arabians horse ranch, farm fields, and a sand and gravel mine. Matt Vandelac, co-manager of the project, couldn't be prouder of the site.

"It's perfect for an environmentally friendly course like ours," said Vandelac. "We didn't need or even want pristine land."

When finished, Wynstone will have the look and feel of the timeless courses of Ireland and Scotland, where golf began in the 1500s. That means barely a tree. Lots of humps and hillocks. Sandy soils. Short rough, at least short near the fairway. Farther away it turns to increasingly taller meadow and prairie grasses. The bent-grass fairways will be plenty green. But the whole course won't shine like an emerald.

"The ultimate compliment someone could give our design team is that the course looks like it was mowed out of a big field," said Chris Monti, associate designer for Weed Golf Course Design of Ponte Verda, Fla. "We want Wynstone to harken back to golf's roots," which began at St. Andrews, Scotland. There, on a course wedged between farmland and coastal sand dunes along the North Sea, early players made low-running shots from tee to green. At least they did as long as no bunker blocked their way--bunkers, according to lore, created by sheep nestling in hollows to seek shelter from storms.

"To this day, the great European courses continue to have a very natural appearance," Monti said. "They aren't soft and lush like so many American courses." This scruffiness has environmental advantages, he added, because they require less irrigation and less chemical use.

"We have identified native flowers and plants that will grow well on this site with minimum or no maintenance," said Monti.

Wynstone's design plans moved swiftly through Washington County's regulatory review processes because of the suitability of the site and the concept for the land.

"It was a nice fit," said Dennis O'Donnell, the county's senior land specialist. "The design didn't generate any groundwater or surface water pollution concerns. Our county board agreed it was not only a good use of the land, but it also would preserve open space in our fast-growing county."

Score card: A birdie for the environment. Highly disturbed land was planted in natural cover, including many native species. And as long as the course is profitable, the site will be preserved as open space.

Back Up North

It was July 16, 1997, and Arnold Palmer, the golf legend, liked what he saw. Hired as a designer, Palmer was on tour of 499 acres of wildland at Breezy Point near the shores of Pelican Lake. From the seat of his all-terrain vehicle, Palmer could easily envision streams of grass flowing through this forest, streams that would spill down from elevated tee boxes, broaden into elongated pools, and then rush forward to large greens as smooth as the top of a pool table. Deacon's Lodge, an 18-hole course named in honor of his father, opened this summer.

Like the new courses at Cragun's, Deacon's Lodge typifies most new golf course development. It isn't built on a rare ecological community, yet it isn't built on land that had been plowed, pastured, or mined, either. Instead, it flows through a natural landscape, which is ordinary in some ways and extraordinary in others.

"We look hard for the right land," said Peter Loyd, golf director for Sienna Corp., developer of Deacon's Lodge. "This property was ideal because it had it all--three wilderness lakes, wetlands, rolling topography, tall Norway pine that loggers never cut, and bright white clumps of birch. Deacon's Lodge has a great north woods feel to it. And it's all sitting on about 170 feet of pure sand that's ideal for growing grass."

Score card: One over par. The golf course ripped up natural woodlands and wildlife habitat, but at least the plant and animal communities weren't considered rare in the Brainerd area.

Fragmented Landscapes

The values that developers seek for golfers--lakes, rolling forest, and gorgeous vistas--are values shared by many other people, who couldn't care less if they ever sink a 40-foot putt. This nongolfing public also worries about new residential development and gas stations, convenience stores, and service businesses that inevitably spring up around golf courses and other recreation areas.

Over time, the more bent grass that grows, the less habitat for wildlife and native plant species. In the forested parts of the state, for example, golf courses reduce the amount of interior forest used by songbirds such as the ovenbird and wood thrush. The forest that does remain--actually strips of trees between fairways--shelters skunks, white-tailed deer, and other common species. However, these strips make poor habitat for species that are uncommon and becoming more so each decade. As a whole, Minnesota's forests are becoming more edge rich and interior poor.

"Most rare species have very specific needs," says Pam Perry, DNR nongame specialist at Brainerd. "The more the landscape is fragmented, the more it fails to meet the needs of certain plants and animals."

Locally, Perry's concerns are being addressed in some ways. At Brainerd, for example, she is on an advisory board that Cragun's created to help guide its golf course development. Nationally, Audubon International, a stewardship organization not affiliated with the National Audubon Society, offers an education and certification program that encourages golf courses to meet certain drainage, water conservation, pest management, land management, and habitat criteria. Several Minnesota courses have such certification and others are seeking it.

Likewise, many courses have increased their use of organic fertilizer and decreased their chemical dependency. Many courses use less water than they once did, in part because computerized irrigation systems are calibrated to shade, sunlight, length of day, slope, and other factors to ensure water isn't wasted. Izaty's Golf and Yacht Club at Lake Mille Lacs installed a major water treatment facility. Rather than using well water, Izaty's now irrigates with treated waste water.

Balance The Needs

The relationship between a successful business and a sustainable environment is at the heart of every golf course proposal that lands on the desks of the DNR for environmental review. For it is the DNR's job to balance the needs of nature against the nature of society. Long ago, golf was a working-class game from Scotland that conformed itself to nature. Not so anymore.

"Long, open fairways and greens of very short grass don't resemble any natural communities in Minnesota," says Bonita Eliason, DNR Natural Heritage and Nongame Research Program supervisor. "Fragmenting native forests with these open habitats makes them unsuitable for all but common, generalist species."

One way to protect natural lands is to buy them and leave them alone. Clearly, this is done in certain instances. But government, The Nature Conservancy, and others do not have the dollars to buy every piece of land with ecological value. And they never will.

So, the more realistic challenge is to protect natural resources while also allowing society to use land for economic gain. This won't be easy. Golf's potential profits draw developers to scenic and natural settings that despite their ecological value almost beg for fairways and sand traps.

"The DNR is not anti-golf," said Johnson, the DNR environmental review specialist. "We simply assess ecological impacts and pass this information along to local decision makers." This work, he said, drives the land-use decisions that are made at the local level, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

For the best decisions to be made, the DNR and local governments will have to work together more closely. Currently, the DNR becomes involved only after a site has been selected and the project has the momentum of a well-struck ball. In the future, the DNR will likely become more of a caddy, a constant consultant to communities so that they can plan for golf course development rather than just react to already formulated plans. This will require local governments to swing deeper into natural resource planning and the DNR to show up at more local government land-use meetings.

Will golf course development slow down? Probably not any time soon. In fact, the Explore Minnesota Golf Alliance, a new marketing organization, has plans to make Minnesota a regional golfing destination, much like Myrtle Beach, S.C., where golf courses have grown from 33 in 1983 to 103 today.

Where the courses of tomorrow will be built will be determined, in part, by the values everyone places on conservation and commerce today.

C.B. Bylander, DNR Regional Information Officer in Brainerd, won two best reporting awards for his story "Fishing for Love or Money" in the July-August 1998 issue of the Volunteer.