A planning application has been submitted to Highland Council to construct a golf course on Coul Links, Sutherland but the applicant is not Donald Trump. The developer’s target lies within Loch Fleet Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Protection Area for birds & Ramsar wetland, a site that is predominantly tidal mudflat. Coul Links is one of very few expanses of undeveloped & largely unspoilt sand dunes remaining in Scotland, & its special wildlife & landforms are protected by those UK & European legal designations & international treaty. Its development would be at odds with Highland Council’s environmental policies.
The government’s conservation agency, which has objected to the proposals, states on its website that SSSIs “are those areas of land & water that Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) considers to best represent our natural heritage - its diversity of plants, animals & habitats, rocks & landforms, or a combination of such natural features. They are the essential building blocks of Scotland's protected areas for nature conservation … It is an offence for any person to intentionally or recklessly damage the protected natural features of an SSSI."
Trump Golf got official approval to destroy Foveran Links SSSI (Aberdeen) after exaggerating economic benefits, much shenanigans & Scottish Government intervention. Similar could happen again but this time the speculator is Coul Links Ltd. led by Mike Keiser, President of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Oregon, Trump Golf’s main global rival, & entrepreneur Todd Warnock.
From October 2015, articles in The Northern Times publicised proposals for the international 18-hole golf course. The developers blithely spoke of the perceived advantages to golf & economy, ignored nature conservation legal designations but mentioned new nature trails with wildlife ‘information’. Development propaganda would not inform the public how much wildlife, habitat, landforms & amenity have been destroyed & degraded. Exhibitions, to elicit public votes of support, have either paid scant attention to the wildlife, as in the August 2016 displays which relegated a habitat survey to just a tiny cryptic map at Scottie dog eye level, or in October 2017 presented flawed ecology. The less truth people know the less insensitive the plans appear.
Constructing the golf course on Coul Links would create an unnatural catastrophe. It would mean bulldozing, digging, recontouring, burying wet slacks, reseeding with introduced grasses, habitat fragmentation, under-grazing, control of wild grazing animals (rabbits & deer), fertilising & herbiciding (with run-off), irrigating & intensively mowing 40.5 acres, with substantial collateral damage, immediate & insidious. The attempted bulk habitat & species translocation, of dune heath & 100 rare coastal juniper, would not involve Kew Gardens staff.
Size & connectivity of habitats are ecologically critical, affecting species populations, diversity, interaction & survivability. Construction traffic, borrow pits & sand-moving would disturb & damage the geomorphology, hydrology (water quality & seasonal levels), low-nutrient profiles (on which plants rely) & habitat biodiversity over a much wider area. Wetlands would be filled with sand to reduce waterlogging for lawns, displacing specialised, scarce, rare & vulnerable plants & insects. Fine irregular patterns of topography, micro-habitats & vegetation mosaics, like dry hummocks & wet slacks, would be destroyed. Human disturbance would further reduce bird populations in surviving habitats.
'Compromise' from 'invasive' species [the result of management neglect & rejected SNH grant aid (£0.23M since 2010)] & stunted felled N American lodgepole pines (misidentified by developer's ecologists as Scots pines), is being grossly exaggerated to excuse 'remediating' so much natural vegetation with manicured mediocrity. Naturalness is a key criterion in SSSI selection. Bracken, gorse, tall herbs & rank grassland support more wildlife than lawns. The endemic Fonseca's seed-fly, thought confined globally to Sutherland dunes, requires 'weeds'. Claims about an environmental net gain from moving fragile habitats & species, controlling Scots pine, rare at Coul & in its native zone, & cessation of duck shooting are ludicrous.
Dunes naturally have cycles of erosion & deposition. Plans include greens & fairways constructed near the crest of the foredunes & a burn outlet, eliminating important species & weakening natural sea defences regardless of the increasing risks. This would probably necessitate adding a culvert & artificial sea defences on the seaward edge, like an expanse of boulder rip rap, leading to beach narrowing (part National Nature Reserve) & coastal erosion at nearby settlements, the judgement of leading geomorphologist Dr Jim Hansom of Glasgow University.
Threatened dunes outside the SSSI are of comparable quality, including the tallest foredune & spring habitats, supporting many species, including endemic Fonseca fly, rough horsetail, frog orchid, small blue butterfly & plants at their northern UK limits, like restharrow (destined for a golf green) & abundant rock-rose, the latter the food-plant of a dependent priority species, northern brown argus butterfly.
The developers talk of 'sensitivity', 'minimalism', ‘naturalness’, 'utmost care' & the high repute of its designers, but experience in Oregon paints a different picture: http://www.notcoul.com/developers.html
Leading dune ecologist Dr Tom Dargie describes the developer’s surveys & Environmental Statement as ‘unfit for purpose’. He judges the site worthy of (European) Special Area of Conservation (SAC) status, which would have prevented such development being considered.
There is a superfluity of coastal golf courses in Scotland, many undersubscribed. The environmentally responsible option is to avoid development within such special habitats.
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