Content area
Full text
Key Words bird conservation, golf courses, golf industry, nongame wildlife
At approximately 55 ha cach. the more than 17,000 golf coures in the United States occupy a land area larger than that of some states (Brennan 1992). Some view golf courses as islands of green in rapidly urbanizing landscapes, while others they are a spreading blight of habitat conversion. Although native vegetation may be abundant on some golf courses, these natural habitats usually occur in small, isolated patches dominated by edge and subject to high levels of disturbance by humans (Terman 1997). The idea that golf courses could provide quality wildlife habitat elicits a decidedly mixed response among the public (Gange 2003). Unfortunately, evaluating the potential conservation value of golf courses is difficult because surprisingly little research has focused directly on the influence of golf-course design and management on wildlife and their habitats. Even for birds, which often have served as the bellwether taxa for assessing environmental impacts, there is only a small handful of peer-reviewed studies on the suitability of golf courses (Green and Marshall 1987, Blair 1996, Terman 1997). In this special section we attempt to answer the central question: can golf courses play a meaningful role in bird conservation? Some of the specific conclusions from this focused coverage are described here.
Golf courses can support birds that are of conservation concern and sometimes provide surrogate habitats for species of high management priority.
Overall, researchers found surprisingly high species richness, diversity, and abundance on many golf courses. For example, > 10,000 individuals of 42 species of waterbirds were observed using 183 golf-course ponds in Florida (White and Main 2005), and 82 species of birds were detected on 24 South Carolina courses (Jones et al. 2005). Even when compared to native landscapes (e.g., Sonoran desert, Arizona), golf courses supported greater abundances and diversity of birds, largely due to the riparian vegetation community sustained by irrigation on the courses (Zwartjes-Merola et al. 2005). This raises the possibility that, at least in arid regions, golf courses might serve as surrogates for riparian vegetation communities, which are vanishing fast in regions such as the southwestern United States (Ohmart 1994). This role as a "habitat-surrogate" also was suggested by studies finding that certain sensitive species associated...