Audubon program takes golf courses from pesticides to shade, habitat and plant diversity
Wide-open fairways provide no shade and no plant diversity.
April 26, 2025
We Palm Beachers love our golf courses.
But our beautifully manicured fairways and greens often harbor a chemical cocktail of toxic pesticides and herbicides. Day-to-day interaction with these chemicals, through the skin or inhalation, has been linked to severe health conditions.
Even minor exposures can accumulate, as many of these chemicals are known carcinogens or endocrine disruptors, increasing the risk of cancers, reproductive issues or hormonal imbalance. Golf courses can be more of an ecological nightmare than the idyllic playgrounds they are purported to be.
Here are some of the most concerning chemicals used on golf courses on a regular basis, with no regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency:
2,4-D: This was initially a component of Agent Orange, developed by Dow Chemical in the 1940s during World War II. It induces a cancer-like process in plants, causing the cells to grow out of control. Decades of scientific evidence support its danger to human health and the environment.
Chlorpyrifos: This organophosphate insecticide is a systemic neurotoxin, and kills insects by attacking their nervous systems. It is the most widely used insecticide in the U.S., extensively used in agriculture on such staple crops as wheat, apples, citrus and cherries. Typical diets, particularly those of children, contain significant chlorpyrifos residues. Chlorpyrifos has been linked to neuro-degenerative diseases (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and ALS) and can permanently damage the developing brains of children, causing reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders.
Glyphosate: Introduced in the 1970s, this herbicide has been definitively linked to autism in children, and to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s in adults. Studies dating back as far as 2004 found infants and toddlers exposed to glyphosate had a greatly increased risk of developing brain tumors and leukemia. Dicamba is now often used to replace glyphosate, but it may be even more toxic.
Maintenance-free Bahama Senna would add a bright spot of color along a fairway.
How did we end up with such extensively manicured fairways and greens in the first place? If you go back to the origins of golf in Scotland, it was originally played in fields, pastures, and along shorelines, with players attempting to hit a pebble over sand dunes and around tracks using a bent stick or club. We’ve come a long way, but environmentally, we could be doing better.
Fiddlewood has beautiful glossy foliage, fragrant flowers and does not need maintenance.
Fortunately, many golf courses are now opting for certification from the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program, a cooperative effort between the United States Golf Association and Audubon International. Basically, Audubon certification is a designation offered to golf courses that maintain bird and wildlife-friendly, pesticide-free environments.
The program promotes ecologically sound land management and the conservation of natural resources to preserve the natural heritage of the game of golf. Its positive impact extends beyond the boundaries of the golf course and into the surrounding community.
Sadly, golf has not been an industry that prioritizes environmentally friendly practices. Courses are regularly doused with glyphosate to replace the turf or reconfigure fairways and greens. Golf courses use more than 50,000 pounds of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers each year along with 5.9 billion gallons of water, causing significant runoff into neighboring waterways. These chemicals contaminate groundwater, rivers, lakes and streams, while also harming local flora and fauna.
Chemicals that don’t escape into waterways accumulate in the soil, remaining toxic for decades. Neighboring homes are also subject to chemical drift after applications, depending on the wind or weather.
The aerial roots of banyans begin as thin tendrils emerging from upper branches and can take months to reach the ground.
I love golf and play in two women’s leagues. Everyone with whom I play is concerned about the environment and we constantly discuss how golf courses could be improved. Three items claim top priority: Shade, habitat, and plant diversity. Let’s face it, it’s hot in Florida, and excessive sun exposure causes skin cancer. If courses offered a little more shade, at the tee boxes or along the fairways, we’d all be happier. And a few more trees would improve the habitat issue: we need to provide for the birds and wildlife that share our courses.
I’m always told that courses need speed of play, and excess shrubbery, while requiring additional maintenance, is just another place to lose your ball. But balls are cheap; we can all afford to lose a few to provide habitat for birds and pollinators. Additionally, areas of dense wildlife habitat might be an incentive to hit your balls away from those locations — maybe try to hit the ball straighter!
Courses are so wide open now that any mis-hit shot can easily end up on an adjacent fairway. More plantings between fairways would provide privacy, habitat, and dare I mention, beauty?
Flowers of cinnamon bark feed pollinators while providing endless interest and beauty.
We’re all out on the links to enjoy the outdoors, and I always felt that this included the plants, birds, and butterflies that live there. And this brings up the third component — plant diversity. So many courses have become monocultures with just a few of the same plants: Wide-open spaces dotted with palm trees. It may look beautiful to some, but it’s a sterile unstable aesthetic. Underlying those vast swaths of green is a toxic chemical soup with no environmental benefits.
I’ve played with friends on many courses in Palm Beach County; one of my favorites was Mayacoo Lakes because it instantly reminded me of what I imagined Old Florida to be. The fairways were surrounded with beautiful native plantings that were always in bloom and we regularly saw roseate spoonbills, ospreys, and even kingfishers on the course. We had such fun seeing the birds and enjoying the scenery that we returned for another round a week or so later.
The bronze-colored undersides of satin leaf’s foliage makes this tree a stunner anywhere.
To our surprise and dismay, backhoes and tree trimmers were swarming the course, ripping out shrubs and saw palmettos, and thinning the wonderful canopy of trees along the fairways. They were, we learned, “improving the course for speed of play.”
After playing 15 holes, we couldn’t bear it any longer, and decided that instead of finishing our round, we’d go back and salvage some of the beautiful air plants that were being tossed into piles headed for the dump. We all took a few home and mine are thriving in my garden today. But I’ve never been back to play there — it was just too sad.
So let’s ask our golf courses to earn Audubon certification — while planting beautiful native plants to support bird and wildlife habitat and provide beauty for the players. Those Egyptian geese are stunning, but they’re not native; wouldn’t it be fun to see the wood storks, herons and roseate spoonbills that once frequented our courses?
Young red new growth of Simpson’s stopper is lovely next to the fragrant white flowers.
Here are some wonderful native plants that would look terrific along our fairways and would require very little maintenance: Florida firebush (Hamelia patens); Bahama senna (Cassia chapmanii); beautyberry (Callicarpa americana); marlberry (Ardisia escallonioides); Jamaica caper (Capparis cynophallophora); bloodberry (Cordia globosa); black torch (Erithalis fruiticosa); golden creeper (Ernodia littoralis); myrsine (Myrsine cubana); Wild coffee (Pyschotria nervosa); rouge plant (Rivina humilis); necklacepod (Sophora tomentosa); bay cedar (Suriana maritima); saw palmetto (Serenoa repens); Cocoplum (Chrysobalanus icaco); coontie (Zamia integrifolia); and Simpson's stopper (Myrcianthes fragrans).
Then throw in some night-blooming jasmine and brunfelsia for fragrance, and fiddlewood, Bahama strongbark, and satinleaf for shade. These would enhance every golf course in South Florida!
Fragrant white flowers of wild coffee attract zebra heliconian butterflies.