Audubon award for UK Marriotts

9 July 2010

All ten UK Marriott golf resorts have been awarded Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status for their work on projects in environmental areas around the courses.

The programme addresses five key environmental quality areas: Wildlife and Habitat Management, Chemical Use, Reduction and Safety, Water Conservation, Water Quality Management and Outreach and Education. 

"To be awarded this prestigious accolade and be classed alongside the likes of Valderrama and Loch Lomond is a real honour and a clear testament to all the hard work that our greensstaff have put in over the past few years,” said Alison Ainsworth, Marriott’s senior director of golf, leisure and spa operations in Europe. “A great area of success has been the naturalisation of shorelines in lakes and streams at all the courses, which has in turn seen an increase in wildlife activity in these areas, including insects such as dragonflies and butterflies, and birds taking up permanent residency and raising young.”

“Native trees have also been planted on the golf courses in a rolling programme; these are planted as eventual replacements for much older established trees to reduce the impact on the playability of the course in the case of any losses.”