The birds and the bees

Clitheroe Golf Club have incorporated a number of wildlife and ecology projects onto the course, and now ecology expert Jean Holt is spreading the word.

Jean has worked at Clitheroe since 2019 and has created an ecology leaflet to explain how golf courses can be a great place to help wildlife thrive and develop.

Golf clubs particularly often have the space to accommodate bee hives - usually in less well-walked areas. Within the sustainable golf strategy, they make sound sense - a match made in Heaven when greens teams sow swathes of wildflowers along the course to create a ready source of nectar and pollen.

"My husband was the Greens Chairman at the club for many years, and one of the greenkeeping team mentioned that members wanted to cut down an area of woodland due to constantly losing balls. The greenkeepers obviously wanted to avoid that, so we brought in Ecologist James Hutchinson from BIGGA to get his expert advice. It gave me a much better understanding of ecology and I started to be much more hands-on. I also wanted to share the knowledge through a leaflet for members, with a map showing the woodland and explaining why we had made the educated decision not to cut down the rough. Since then, the ecology has evolved and now it just keeps growing."

Jean has since printed over 2000 copies of her wildlife information leaflet with the aim of raising as much awareness as possible. She said: "I've probably distributed about 1500 leaflets. Every time we have visitors from other golf courses, I give one out."

When asked about what her overall goals are, it is simple: "I want to encourage other golf courses to take on some of the things that we've done. It's really important that people start caring for wildlife - especially because of the amount of green land that has been decimated."

"In many parts of the UK, green land is increasingly under pressure from the need for more housing, making the decreasing acreage of green spaces more important for wildlife. Golf courses have an important contribution to make with their large open spaces, natural rough, water and out-of-play areas. These have all been described as a green lung and a haven for wildlife."

Jean told us about the recent wildlife projects at Clitheroe: "To date, I have released 182 hedgehogs. Some of them have been rescued as babies then, when they get to the correct weight, they are passed to us - they've never seen woodland, they've never seen leaves or smelt the air. They just get so excited; instincts kick in and they huff, puff and squirm, then off they go into the woodland. That's what it's all about and it's the most joyful thing for the course to help in this way."

"We've got 100 bird boxes spread over the course including boxes for kestrels and tawny owls, so we go and check them all regularly. I also purchased four wildlife cameras to keep an eye on things. We have a thriving population of brown hares and members regularly see between four and six during their game."

"We also have our own honey which we sell to members and the revenue gets put back into ecology projects. We introduced the bees without telling any of the members just to see how it would go. After 18 months, nobody said a word. There are five hives out there at the moment and approximately 200,000 bees around the ninth tee. Dave Heaton is our beekeeper and also Chair of the East Lancashire Beekeepers Association."

Jean expressed how the importance of collaboration and understanding has helped to push the ecology drive: "All the greenkeepers are totally on board with the ecology projects. Last year, they planted 500 square metres of wildflowers for the bees and we've done the same again this year. One of the team knows every creature on this course; he knows where it lives, how many legs it's got, what it's doing and how many babies it had. We've even had four baby deer born in the woods this year."

Members have also been buying into the ecology projects, Jean said: "Since I started in 2019, everybody is so much more aware and caring about the wildlife. I can't walk around without being stopped and people telling me what they've seen and where it was; it's fantastic. One very hot day, a gentleman telephoned to say he had found a baby tawny owl looking quite sick in the bunker. We went out and rescued it to the long grass, and the next day it's mother was calling out. It felt like we had reunited the family."

"Clubs need to get the members on board. I will guarantee that there is a member who likes birds, somebody who's interested in butterflies and insects and someone else might be interested in lichens; it is just about letting the members know that they can help out."

Jean reflected on using a sustainable wildlife cycle in order to work from the ground up: "We try to use all our waste. If you look after the tiny creatures, then the insects will bring in the voles and thus they bring in the tawny owls. It starts from the bottom; you have to have the full wildlife cycle to be sustainable and keep bringing in different species. We have used old pallets to make three bug hotels which provide safe shelter for tiny and medium-sized creatures, on whom the whole food chain depends. Voles and field mice thrive in bug hotels and, consequently, so do the owls who enjoy a plentiful food supply! There's no cost to making little things like this."