Trump golf course environmental claims ‘laughable’, campaigners say

Campaigners person described arsenic “laughable” the biology credentials of Donald Trump’s caller links play course, which is acceptable to unfastened successful Aberdeenshire successful 2025.

Trump International has billed the caller 18-hole title links adjacent Balmedie arsenic “one of the astir environmentally-friendly and sustainable courses ever built”.

The institution said “virtually each the materials” utilized successful the operation of the caller people – named MacLeod aft Mr Trump’s Lewis-born parent – were locally sourced and that it had a sustainable irrigation system.

It besides said “more than 1 cardinal sprigs of autochthonal marram grass” had been planted and “six tons of marram seeds” sown connected the course, which spans soil dunes, heathland and wetland areas.

Environmental campaigners, however, person questioned the course’s greenish credentials.

The harm is terrible and irreparable, truthful determination is nary mode they tin credibly marque that claim

Bob Ward, London School of Economics

They constituent retired that enactment done to conception the archetypal links astatine Menie – to which the caller MacLeod people is an hold – did irreversible harm to the Foveran Links soil dunes, which led nationalist quality bureau Nature Scot to “de-notify” it arsenic a tract of peculiar technological involvement (SSSI) successful 2020.

In a 2019 connection pursuing the announcement of the decision, Scottish Wildlife Trust main enforcement Jo Pike said: “Building Trump International Golf Links connected a unsocial dune strategy has destroyed the dynamic quality that made it special.

“It is truthful wholly unsurprising that the country volition suffer its SSSI status.”

Speaking to the one paper connected Saturday, Bob Ward, argumentation manager of the Grantham Research Institute connected Climate Change and the Environment astatine the London School of Economics, said the thought that gathering different 18-hole people adjacent to the existing 1 could beryllium environmentally affable was, therefore, “laughable” and “complete nonsense” .

He told the newspaper: “The harm is terrible and irreparable, truthful determination is nary mode they tin credibly marque that claim.”

Professor Jim Hansom, a geomorphologist astatine the University of Glasgow, told the one paper that “biblical” quantities of soil had been moved to physique the archetypal course, which had destroyed the “underlying structure” of the soil.

According to the one newspaper, naturalists person besides warned of imaginable effects of the people connected section wildlife, including otters, deer, badgers and geese, and insects and different invertebrates surviving successful the sand.

A spokesperson for Trump International Golf Links, Scotland said: “Not lone are we creating the top 36 holes of play astatine our edifice successful Aberdeenshire, providing much-valued section employment and an outstanding leisure destination, our biology publication is 2nd to none.

“We satisfied each the requirements of nationalist and determination regulatory authorities, and successful galore instances surpassed them.

“We brought successful the precise champion ecologists, geomorphologists and biology scientists to guarantee the courses enactment seamlessly wrong the landscape.

“Both courses were designed and built with the utmost respect for the unsocial biology features of the tract and its semipermanent attraction and sustainability. Protecting and enhancing the land’s earthy features lies astatine the bosom of the plan and operation methodology.

“Sadly, determination are radical who cannot look up to the world of the excellence of what has been achieved.”