A Deeper Shade of Green
The Grand Teton Mountains serve as a dramatic backdrop to the golf course at Wyoming’s Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club, another of Vail Resorts’ golf courses certified by the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program.
Everybody’s talking about it, and everybody’s trying to do more of it: go green that is. Certainly, the giant emerald wave sweeping the nation these days has washed up some interesting eco-manifestations: carpeting made of reused plastic, hemp apparel and handbags, and insulation composed of recycled clothing, to name only a few. While some of these efforts may seem quite a stretch, what could present a happier, more naturally green opportunity than greener golf courses?
RockResorts, the collection of luxury properties owned by Vail Resorts, has seized that opportunity by embarking upon an ambitious eco-program at its six golf courses throughout the West. The golf initiative mirrors the company’s wider environmental commitment across the full spectrum of its hotel and restaurant operations, from renewable energy and water conservation to waste reduction, sustainable construction, recycling, and organic “natural” cuisine.
Rob Katz, Vail Resorts’ young and energetic CEO, leaves no question about the sincerity of the company message when he says, “We believe these initiatives are not only the right thing to do, they also represent where the entire travel industry will be heading in the next several years….”
Last summer, the company even hired Julie Klein, who comes equipped with a Masters Degree in Environmental Policy and Management from Denver University, as its first full-time director of environmental affairs.
Her mandate is to maximize the ecological best practices of the company’s six golf courses in such areas as water conservation, habitat management, recycling, and green building methods. Three of the company’s six golf courses — Keystone River, Beaver Creek, and the Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club — are already certified in the eco gold standard of the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program. And so one of her first concerns is seeing the Keystone Ranch and two Red Sky Ranch courses in Colorado through the process.
“We want the Audubon Program to be the basic standard for all our courses,” says Klein, “and then we’ll go beyond the program and work with Audubon and other groups to raise the bar for us, and for all golf courses in general. It makes perfect sense for us to focus on this, given that our golf operations are all in the most beautiful of mountain settings.” The Audubon certification program recognizes commitments to habitat protection, chemical management, water conservation, and environmental education at top golf venues across the nation.
Vail Resorts’ Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club’s course is located at the spectacular gateway to Grand Teton National Park, in the midst of one of the busiest wildlife neighborhoods in the country. (Editor’s note: Although the Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club is owned by Vail Resorts, it is not part of RockResorts’ properties.) When players take to the links here, curious moose, elk and deer are often among their audience, and the occasional bear sighting enlivens the action too. The local bison herd also frequents the links, and their natural meanderings about the course can carry the concept of aeration to a whole new level.
At the Jackson Hole course, making sure the wildlife has free access to traditional migration routes is top of mind, and an Audubon habitat protection mandate as well. To that end, fencing is kept to a minimum and people with homes around the golf course started to notice. When these nearby residents began asking course managers to educate them about what steps they could take to live in harmony with the neighborhood critters, a partnership developed. Fences around individual homes came down, and so did the bird feeders that can be a dangerous temptation to bears. Homeowners learned what vegetation to plant in their yards that would attract hummingbirds and butterflies.
Golf course managers are working with different groups on another piece of the Audubon program: improving water purity and aquatic habitat on the Gros Ventre River bordering the club. Though there’s currently a robust trout population, the Trout Unlimited organization is looking at installing fish ladders, tagging fish to track whether they end up in irrigation canals, and other measures to enhance their numbers. Course managers also invited University of Wyoming researchers to annually test nitrogen levels in the water.
“They did the tests right after we put out our fertilizers because we wanted to see if the no-application zones around the streams were working,” explains club general manager Guy Evans. “It gave us great peace of mind to find there was no surface contamination coming through the club: the water on our course was the same purity as some of the streams in Yellowstone.” The Audubon program requires bi-annual surface water testing for nitrates, phosphates and other ground water contaminants as well.
Water conservation is another important element of the program’s environmental checklist. At Jackson, they use the golf course’s own well water during high demand times, instead of taking water from the Gros Ventre when ranchers and farmers’ irrigation is putting pressure on the river’s capacity. The abundance of native plans and grasses on the course comprises another water-saving measure as most of the year they don’t require any artificial irrigation.
Back in Colorado, RockResorts’ Red Sky Ranch is home to an acclaimed duo of 18-hole courses west of Vail that are now involved in earning Audubon certification. Both courses — one designed by Greg Norman and another beauty by Tom Fazio — preserve the native environment of aspen, junipers, sagebrush, and oak brush that make this high country setting such a unique golfing experience. Much care was taken during construction to avoid leveling trees and keep the original look of the terrain. “After construction, we also put a lot of time and attention into revegetating and restoring these native areas, so the land looked like it did before,” says Superintendent Jason Shattie, who knows these considerations are important to Audubon Society approval.
Shattie is also directing such other Audubon-required mandates as water conservation and limited application of chemicals. Whereas in the past, weed control consisted of a machine with a 20-gallon tank of chemicals saturation-spraying the entire course, today such drastic methods are a big no-no. Instead, it’s all about precise spot application to noxious weeds only.
The possibility of harmful fertilizer ingredients leaching into the soil and from there to the water sources ended with a fertilizer revolution that began some years ago. The fertilizers used on golf courses today are hi-tech, featuring a biodegradable shell that dissolves bit by bit as the weather warms, releasing the good stuff inside onto the grass. These fertilizers are mostly organic, derived from sea kelp and other plant materials: another Audubon prerequisite.
As on the Jackson Hole course, here water is the most crucial ingredient in keeping the greens and fairways gloriously green in a summer season that can be notoriously hot
and dry. To conserve the prized liquid, the automatic sprinkling systems at Red Sky are adjusted daily according to what amount is actually needed. They also save water by hand watering, which allows them to water only the growth that requires moisture. Deep watering at night is another strategy that minimizes use.
But the new golf clubhouse at Jackson Hole can definitely claim the Oscar for best original water-saving idea with its waterless urinals. “With the waterless urinals and our bio-remediation cart wash station, we now use 60 to 70 percent less water than we used to,” states Evans. And the management’s eco-creativity doesn’t stop there. When it came time to erect a new clubhouse, they pulled down the 1960’s vintage building and actually recycled 90 percent of its lumber. Some was used in the new clubhouse, and the rest was run through a chipper and donated as bark mulch to Habitat for Humanity. Really getting warmed up now, those in charge decided why not use recycled blue jeans for the building’s insulation. When all was said and done, the building earned the distinction of being named one of the first LEEDS-certified golf clubhouses in the nation.
Julie Klein says the RockResorts golf course superintendents are fully involved in the green mission and excited to share their ideas and knowledge to go above and beyond the Audubon guidelines. “We’re all eager to maximize what we can do for the environment across all the resorts,” she relates. “Our philosophy at RockResorts is that our product is really the great outdoors, and we feel like we have a unique leadership obligation as well as opportunity to integrate environmental improvements into all our operations.”
Joy Overbeck is a Denver-area journalist whose work has appeared in publications such as Redbook, Woman’s Day, Health, Readers Digest, 5280 Denver Magazine, Vail-Beaver Creek Magazine, LUXE, and others. She is also the author of three books.
