Species at protected Scottish Highland dunes would be 'almost eliminated' by golf course plans

Controversial plans for a new “world class” links golf course on one of the last coastal dune habitats of its kind in Scotland would result in the near elimination of certain invertebrates and flora at the site, an ecology expert has warned.

Professor Stewart Angus, coastal ecology manager with NatureScot, rejected claims by the applicants for the new course that different plants would “flourish” after dune heath is mowed at the land in Coul Links, Sutherland, which is subject to a range of environmental protection measures.

However, Dr Andy McMullen, a botanist and ecologist advising the applicants Communities for Coul (C4C), said management at the course would pursue a “sensitive and intelligent” approach to mowing, stressing the experience of those in charge and the range of techniques they would employ.

On the first day of a week-long series of hearings into the plans for the project, which if approved would be built by prominent US golf course developer Mike Keiser, officials from the Scottish Government’s planning and environmental appeals division (DPEA) heard detailed and technical arguments ecological arguments about site, situated between Golspie and Dornoch.

Coul Links is subject to various environmental protections | Contributed

Previous proposals for a golf course, brought forward by Mr Keiser and Todd Warnock, a Chicago-born entrepreneur, were refused permission four years ago. Scottish ministers ruled that while the scheme would have supported economic growth and rural development, the adverse impact on Coul’s wildlife and habitats was too great a price to pay.

The latest plans, which were greenlit by members of Highland Council's north planning applications committee, were called in by Scottish ministers. Addressing the hearing at Embo, representatives from C4C, NatureScot and Not Coul, a local campaign group opposed to the development, set out their positions on the course’s impact on dune habitats, heath and dune slack.

Asked by the DPEA’s reporter, David Buylla, if the plans for the course amounted to a modification of the land that could ultimately be subject to regrowth if it was no longer used for golf, or whether the development would result in loss, Mr Angus said: “We maintain our position that this is loss. This is not an application for a reversible golf course, it’s an application for a golf course, and we have taken that at face value.

NatureScot's Professor Stewart Angus was among those to address the hearing. | Scotsman

Describing the picture painted of habitat diversity and value on mown heath as “somewhat optimistic”, Prof Angus said he had seen mown fairways at Machrihanish Dune in Kintyre, where the poverty of species and poverty of structure was “extreme”. He said at Coul, the invertebrate population and epiphytes would be “not just severely reduced” by mowing, but “almost eliminated”.

Dr Andy McMullen, an academic and botanist acting for C4C, stressed it was important to understand the whole dune system was a “mosaic”, and the areas being impacted were “relatively small”, with the epiphytes not under any threat.

“We’ve got a very experienced greenkeeper here with a range of techniques and we’ll be seeking to achieve these things,” he said. “Just because one course hasn’t achieved it in a particular instance going from grassland doesn’t mean that we can’t achieve it, because we will be approaching things on a rather more experimental level and trying to achieve that.”