Green-approved greens

Shady Canyon Golf Club's driving commitment to environmental measures earns it Audubon cetification as a wildlife sanctuary

By Jeff Rowe

December 18, 2003

IRVINE- At Shady Canyon Golf Club, players sometimes have company on the fairways.

Quail, foxes, hawks, deer, rattlesnakes and an occasional bobcat cruise the area, just as they did for millenniums before the course opened three years ago.

Golf courses often erase native habitat to create the lush fairways, quaint ponds and smooth greens golfers like, but Shady Canyon took a different course. The Irvine Co. worked since the inception of planning for the course to make it a habitat worthy of national recognition.

This month, the Audubon Society recognized the course as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, enabling Shady Canyon to join Coyote Hills in Fullerton as the only Orange County golf courses to have earned the designation. Only 3 percent of the nation's 16,000 golf courses have earned the certification.

For Shady Canyon, the award was the fulfillment of years of work establishing wildlife habitats, planting native shrubs and trees and irrigating with water processed from sewage plants. That water is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, making it like liquid plant food and reducing the need for other fertilizers.

"The beauty of using reclaimed water is that it otherwise would just be dumped into the ocean," said David Major, Shady Canyon golf course superintendent. Major's official title is very ungolf-like, "director of agronomy." Major says the Audubon affiliation has made the staff much more attuned to the plants and animals in the area and not just to whether the greens and fairways are mowed to the correct height.

Using treated, but undrinkable, water from sewage plants earns Shady Canyon political points. Environmentalists criticize golf courses for their great water consumption and extensive use of fertilizers that can wash into streams and lakes and cause algae blooms. They say pressure to save water and reduce fertilizer runoff could induce other golf courses to seek the Audubon designation.

"If there is a trend in that direction, that would be wonderful," said Jachen Schenk, professor of biological science at California, State University Fullerton.

If golf courses were built in blighted areas - sites of abandoned buildings and factories - the environmental impact would be good, Schenk said. But instead, golf courses typically are built in natural woodlands and rangelands, "where the impact is all negative." Other environmental experts lauded the Shady Canyon plan, but noted it would be difficult for many golf courses to dulicate.

"It's the direction courses should take. It's very progressive to be thinking along those lines," said Jay Famiglietti, professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.

At 300 acres, Shady Canyon is better than double the size of the typical golf course. But the fairways and greens only take up about 80 acres, the rest is a wildlife habitat.

Balancing golfers' needs with a gentle hand on the environment can be challenging. In the two years the course has been open, Major has captured 46 rattlesnakes on the course and moved them to places higher up in the canyon. Some might slither back, failing to take the hint.

Humans who want to play the Shady Canyon course and see its wildlife up close need to bring along their checkbooks. Club entry fee is $200,000 and monthly dues are $800.

But golfers are in for a wild game.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the club's director of golf, Brian Gunson, could hear coyotes baying as he was giving a lesson. "Sometimes you can hear the cubs barking away, when the parents bring food home," he said. "And, I've seen bobcats on the 10th and 18th greens, and gray herons and red-tailed hawks. In Orange County you don't see land like this."