Glenelg Golf Club has been named a finalist in the National Banksia Sustainability Awards for Biodiversity.
Now in its 34th year, the National Banksia Sustainability Awards is Australia’s most prestigious sustainability honour, acknowledging leadership in biodiversity, climate change and First Nations people, and offering recognition to outstanding initiatives by organisations that work to conserve, protect, and restore native habitat, flora and fauna.
This well-deserved accolade comes as Glenelg Golf Club Course Superintendent, Tim Warren, and Biodiversity Manager, Monina Gilbey, work to address misconceptions around the drain of Golf courses on their environment, by protecting urban biodiversity.
Urban golf courses are becoming a fundamental contributor to biodiversity, by providing a protected haven for wildlife. Along with native plant populations, including 40 plants of conservation significance, Glenelg Golf Club is home to 90 species of birds, 344 insect species, plus fish, reptiles, microbats, turtles and frogs.
Being on private land, these at-risk plants and the fauna that rely on them, can be protected and flourish without risk of damage or trampling by people and their pets, as can happen in a public park or reserve. The club is also involved in a butterfly rewilding program and studies into invertebrates and microbats.
To further its green credentials, the club is reducing water use through improved irrigation technology, altering irrigation patterns and replacing managed turf with native plants.
