A spiny softshell turtle on the grounds of Ironhorse Golf Club in Leawood, Kan. Photo courtesy of Chris Harriman
When Bri Kenny started using an online citizen scientist website to begin cataloging all the plants, insects and animals she encountered on golf courses in the Scottsdale, Ariz., area, she had no idea the project would ever reach beyond suburban Phoenix.
Not even a year later, her project on Arizona golf course diversity has recorded 1,437 species, with 14,685 observations from 2,691 observers. Her related project collecting information on species diversity across all Troon golf courses has even bigger numbers: 4,270 species, 24,889 observations and 5,525 observers worldwide.
And yet Kenny, Troon’s manager of environmental science and seven-year Affiliate member of GCSAA, finds those numbers a little disappointing.
“I mean, I think it’s great. It’s a great start,” Kenny says. “But I know the species count is low. I know the bird species count is low. Insects is low. I know we can get a lot more. Just thinking in terms of states, if you look at Arizona, you can see we’ve recorded just under 8% of species (on golf courses).”
The project started last summer as Kenny, working with the Arizona Alliance for Golf, met with Scottsdale city officials. She thought it might be beneficial to provide an accurate count of species of flora and fauna found on local golf courses to put a number to the anecdotal claim that golf courses are havens for wildlife. With help from the Scottsdale Community College’s Center for Native and Urban Wildlife, Kenny set to work locally. Observers logged species on iNaturalist.org, a citizen-scientist website that calls itself “an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.”
“From there, I was talking to more of the Arizona Alliance for Golf people, and they said, ‘Why not expand it to the whole state?’” Kenny says. “You know, chapters are good about producing economic impact reports for their states. One thing I felt was really lacking was, they do a good job with economic numbers, but on the environmental side, we discuss it, but we don’t have really hard numbers. I thought we should be able to share some actual numbers of species. So that’s how we ended up doing the whole state of Arizona. From there, why not do all the Troon properties so we can understand what we have across the world? The Southern California Golf Association is starting one. Those are the major ones. That’s the history of it.”
That the projects have grown legs at all in just about nine months or less, without any real outside promotion, is testament to their potential. Kenny shared the company project with folks from Troon, and “that got a lot of traction,” she says. But even the Arizona Alliance for Golf hasn’t formally introduced its project.
“It’s just observations from random people,” Kenny says. “But I think it’s ready. The more superintendents that understand they can just upload a file of your borders in there and get a species count, the better. Once more people know, it will be exciting. I hope more states, chapters, consider doing a project like I started. It’s nice because each individual course can keep track of its own, but then you can combine all those individual projects into different projects. My goal is to have basically every golf course in the U.S.”
Once a golf course’s boundaries are established in iNaturalist, any observation within that boundary can be counted toward that course’s total, whether that observation is made by a golfer, member, birding group, scout or just random passer-by. Or grounds crew member.
One of the most prolific iNaturalist observers is Chris Harriman, a crew member at Ironhorse Golf Club in Leawood, Kan., who has accounted for 10% of the Troon properties’ total species.
Harriman has made nearly 600 observations of 459 species.
“We had spiny softshell turtles. That was a cool find,” he says. “We had three American river otters. We had a mink last year. That caught me off guard.”
Harriman is a bit of a unicorn. His later-in-life degree is in ecology — “Almost wholly non-turfgrass,” he says — but works as a greenskeeper at Ironhorse. An avid golfer, Harriman started working part time at Ironhorse before realizing he could make a living there and he could still pursue his ecological passions.
“When you’re running the mower in the fairway or driving around doing setup, it’s so easy to stumble across a species you’ve never seen before, a plant or bug or whatever, and you post a photo,” says Harriman, who was familiar with iNaturalist from his college days. “Biodiversity is so important, for many reasons.
“We’re in a Pokemon ‘Gotta catch ’em all’ situation. The superintendents want to know what’s out there so they can make choices to manage for it. Are we actually providing good habitat? Great. If not, what do we need to do?”
Andrew Hartsock is GCM’s editor-in-chief.