Earth Day 2023: Wonderful wildlife watchers

Birds, deer, coyotes … roosters? Working outdoors comes with many opportunities, one of them being the potential to develop relationships with wildlife. A lot of superintendents must learn how to adapt and manage these relationships while still keeping the golf course in top shape.

While birds and deer are common in most parts of the United States, depending on where a course is located, it might have some more interesting visitors on the property.

For Derek Hofer, superintendent at Green Meadow Golf Club in Helena, Montana, seeing a mother moose and her calf was once a friendly and frequent occurrence.

“She would come through once a week,” Hofer says. “She always had this calf. I think she had maybe three different calves. I don’t know if the calf was born right here on our place, but you could always see that the calf was just a little bigger all the time, so it’s kind of like a measuring stick.”

Raccoons, skunks, eagles and hawks comprise the majority of Hoffer’s regular wildlife on the course.

It’s less common to see a moose further south, but Ryan McCavitt, director of golf course maintenance operations at Bayou Oaks at City Park in New Orleans, has seen something similarly unique — a group of native roosters.

“They’re fairly domesticated,” he says. “They’ll come up to your golf cart, they’re not scared of the golfers or anything anymore.”

In some cases, the animals are accustomed to seeing and even interacting with people.

“We’re here every day and I swear some of the animals notice,” Hoffer says. “They’re so used to certain things that they’ll clue us off when something weird is going on.” The animals on Hoffer’s course have had the privilege of hearing his rendition of Def Leppard songs while he’s out working.

Similarly, Leasha Schwab, superintendent at Pheasant Run Golf Course in Sharon, Ontario, enjoys seeing a family of red-tailed hawks as much as they enjoy seeing her.

“They always have babies and juvenile hawks are quite funny,” she says. “They’ll grab a golf ball and throw it around, just being quite silly and they grow up around this and so they’re quite used to us and will kind of just sit on the ground or they will follow you around the golf course in the morning.”

While some courses have novelty visitors, they might not all be appreciated in the way the moose, roosters and hawks are. Alligators and bears are two big-game wildlife that have superintendents taking extra precautions to keep their courses and people safe. “If the alligators get larger than 6 feet, we typically trap them and have them removed as a safety concern,” McCavitt says.

Darren Davis, superintendent at Olde Florida Golf Club in Naples, only has the alligators removed when they pose a direct risk to the golfers and employees. “When they come out of the water and eat someone’s golf ball and they go back in the water, it’s time to pull the gator,” he says.

Davis attributes his no size-limit rule to the fact that his course is not residential and does not pose a fear to pets or homes. He also must be cautious and proactive on keeping bears away. “The bears come in occasionally looking for food, so we put in bear-proof Dumpsters,” Davis says. “That’s the thing in South Florida.”

While it’s important to keep the people safe, courses also do their best to keep the animals safe and comfortable as well. At Bayou Oaks at City Park, buffer zones are essential for coexisting.

“We leave acreage between golf and waterways or some native plantings and brush areas where the animals can hide, sleep and nest,” McCavitt says. “We try to leave little pockets throughout the golf course and we try to leave the pockets together so they go from one end of the golf course to another and they’re not really fully exposed in any given time.”

With a 300-plus-acre property and most holes bordered by forest, Pheasant Run has gone a step beyond and added even more additional greenery to benefit wildlife.

“We do really try to put our wildflower areas at the forefront,” Schwab says. “It’s a project that we’ve been doing about eight years now and we’ve probably converted between two and three acres of our property into wildflower naturalized areas.” Pheasant Run also has beehives and a large vegetable garden that attracts many deer and groundhogs.

Providing such a vast landscape of flora and fauna has proved to be increasingly important as many areas are rapidly developing. Because of this, courses have seen an increase in the number of wildlife vising their courses, seeking an oasis.

“My area is developing rapidly,” Davis says. “I think it’s obvious that wildlife looks for new homes in corridors that they can survive.”

McCavitt has seen wildlife return to Bayou Oaks following the construction of the course. The rebuilt course inside City Park opened in 2017. “With all that traffic and machinery and stuff, things kind of scattered,” he says. “Then over the course of the last six or seven years, everything starts migrating back and kind of getting back in their homesteads.

“Any time you’re building something on that scale, you’re always scared about impacting habitat,” McCavitt adds. “I think the park, in particular, and architect Rees Jones did a really good job of mitigating that and leaving a lot of natural areas.”

For highly maintained areas such as fairways and greens, it is still important to be cautious of the wildlife.

Pesticide usage can have a lasting effect on the animals that come into contact with them. Hofer is lucky to not battle disease on the course regularly, which allows him to be more reserved in his pesticide and fungicide usage. “If it’s flowering time and it’s like late May or early June and there just happens to be a lot of bees around, pollinators and things, we might choose not to spray weeds for a while or so,” he says. Hofer prides himself on staying up to date on GCSAA and agronomy standards, opting to wait to spray to allow the pollinators opportunity for success.

McCavitt is also cautious of application rates and water quality on the course.

“We put down such low doses and such low AI percentages that I don’t think we’re doing anything that has a negative impact on the environment,” McCavitt says. “We’re really diligent about just spoon feeding and giving the plants exactly what they need and not overdoing it. I would gather to say that the water is leaving the golf course better than it came in but that’s a really hard measurement because there’s so many different things you can test and measure on, but I could say that we’re not negatively impacting the water.”

With the physical beauty of the golf course landscapes, another rare beauty exists — peacefulness. “In a world where everything seems so crazy all the time, it brings a peaceful feel to it out here,” Hofer says.

Adds Davis: “Others don’t have the opportunity to truly walk in my shoes and to see the beauty of a golf course and truly understand the numerous environmental benefits not just for wildlife but also for water quality and everything else.”

Despite having to take some extra measures to ensure that both wildlife and people remained unharmed, the benefits of being able to coexist often make it worth it.

“There are many that have a negative perception, but it’s because they’re unaware of the positive attributes,” Davis says. “We all coexist. This is certainly their home as well as our place for enjoyment and exercise but in my over 30 years, there haven’t been many problems.”

Cassidy Gladieux is a Northeast Ohio-based writer and frequent Golf Course Industry contributor.