Counting critters and conservation

For most maintenance and groundskeeping crews, arriving at work before the sun is fully risen describes a typical workday. For Harbour Ridge Yacht & Country Club’s director of greens and grounds maintenance Tim Cann, this means interacting with animals other residents on the property might never see if not for the early rise.   

Watching otters scurry across the greens or seeing wild boar feeding are just some of the wildlife scenes Cann has encountered on the Palm City, Florida, course.    

But how can golf courses know exactly what species reside on their property? 

Audubon International, an independent non-profit environmental organization, created a competition to bring awareness to just that. BioBlitz is a species-identifying and counting competition offered to golf courses worldwide.   

Courses can register for the free competition and receive the necessary equipment to explore their courses with the assistance of employees, golfers, volunteers and community members.    

From an environmental aspect, golf courses are frequently questioned for their safety for plant and animal life, and this program helps shine light on what the industry is doing to benefit its environment, Audubon International environmental program specialist Kelsey King says. “Our goal, overall, is for this program to provide our members with the opportunity to promote their property, enable courses to demonstrate their environmental stewardship to their local communities and really taking off that bad reputation that a lot of courses would get,” King says. 

Harbour Ridge, home to two 18-hole courses, a private yacht club and 695 residential homes, won first place in the “Biodiversity” category of the 2023 BioBlitz competition. With the help of club members, 607 different plant and animal species were identified within the property.  

The club first began identifying and tracking species in 2018, carefully documenting their employees' findings in a database. Cann says this practice is part of what made their 2023 results so successful.    

“We started building on what we knew was out there, and that's why we were so successful come 2023,” Cann says. “We had such a good list to go by that the residents were able to identify more of what hadn't already been documented.”   

To protect these identified species, the course features numerous areas deemed environmentally sensitive. Golfers and residents are not permitted to enter these areas to prevent damage to plant and animal species’ homes. This is done to preserve the areas as best as possible, Cann says.    

Through identifying the wildlife on the property, Cann says employees have become more aware of which areas and animals should be avoided during certain times of the year.  

“This time of year, you have to be careful about going into areas, because the bird and wildlife is messy,” Cann says. “This would be the time of year that you really need to back off. Let's let them raise their young, get them out of their nest. And then if there's something that you need to go maintain, such as exotic would be one example. You just wait for that opportunity so that you don't disrupt the normal cycle.”   

Harbour Ridge has learned to share their property with the wildlife residing on it. “With the environment in mind, we coexist with nature and we do a really great job at it,” he says. 

This Florida course is just one of many to compete in BioBlitz. Courses from as far as Africa have participated, and superintendents across the U.S. are making efforts to be more environmentally friendly, leading to preservation of plant and animal life.  

“When people are submitting, I like to look for animals that would be listed as threatened and endangered because it kind of shows you, you know, all of these umbrella species, which are the species that are selected for making conservation related decisions that would typically protect other habitats and species,” King says. “So by tracking that it can help you to make better decision making in the future.” 

This year's BioBlitz competition runs from May 18 to June 17. Harbour Ridge will be competing to retain its title. 

“We're just going to keep trying to push our members to participate and try to encourage other golf courses in their local communities, whether a member or not, to promote the great things that golf courses provide,” King says. 

Kelsie Horner is a Kent State University senior participating in Golf Course Industry's summer internship program.