Community and sustainability earn second environmental award to Nairn Dunbar Golf Club in 2023
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NAIRN Dunbar Golf Club has taken home a second award this year for it efforts in preserving wildlife and sustainable course management.
After beating more than 35,000 golf courses worldwide in February at the Golf Environment Awards 2023, the club has now been awarded the Nature Rich Scotland prize at this year’s VIBES 2023 Scottish Environment Business Awards.
The award recognises efforts to restore and preserve habitat and wildlife across the site as well as sustainable management practices.
Course manager Richard Johnstone said: “We’re trying to be almost a leader within the golf industry, and we hope other courses follow in our footsteps and implement some of the things that we’ve been doing.
“There’s a lot of good work being done out there.”
The club has received five awards in the past two years for its commitment to nature and sustainability where engaging with the community is a key factor according to Mr Johnstone.
“Because we’re a small community club, you need to be sustainable to ensure you can stay alive and thrive, and provide what we can for a members and the community,” he said.
“We are encouraging birds nesting so we’ve engaged local groups to help build bird boxes. “We have invited walker groups during the Nairn Book and Arts Festival to walk the course and understand the wildlife and habitats we’ve created.
“During Covid we also opened up the course to walkers and a lot of people realised what was on the site. We were definitely getting lots of positive feedback for doing that.”
The course boosts the presence of 15 roe deer as well as hare, rabbit and foxes, with a special partnership with RSPB to track migratory birds on the grounds.
“With RSPB we work together to put rings on migratory birds to track them, with some having been traced as far as France, Spain and Africa.
“Hopefully we’re going to speak to the local birdwatching group or local wildlife groups where we could get more of them involved, and possibly photography groups, people who like taking wildlife photography.”
Kenny Boag, head of environmental performance at SEPA, said: “We were delighted to sponsor the Nature Rich Scotland Award which awarded a commendation to Nairn Dunbar Golf Club. Although all the businesses in the category are in the early stages of their environmental development, the golf club is already demonstrating environmentally sustainable management projects such as using grass types more suited to the environmental conditions, protecting and enhancing habitat areas for rare species on site, and reducing lorry emissions by using local indigenous sand.
“We look forward to seeing how the golf club continues to progress their adoption of nature-based solutions.”
