NEWS
GEA finalists announced
The finalists for the 2019 Golf Environment Awards (GEAs), recognising golf clubs and individuals that strive to undertake environmental best practice, were announced in late November.
Over thirty longlisted clubs were visited earlier in the year and painstakingly whittled down to seventeen finalists, including one club from Switzerland.
Four finalists have been named in three GEA categories - Conservation Greenkeeper of Year, Outstanding Environmental Project and Operation Pollinator. However, such was the competition in the Environmental Golf Course of Year category the shortlist has been increased to five finalists.
Representatives from the finalists will attend the glittering awards ceremony on 23 January at the Crown Hotel in Harrogate, during BTME week.
The GEA provides the platform from which the golf industry can demonstrate environmental excellence in all its forms. This has been demonstrated by past finalists and can range from relatively simple but effective projects, to grand scale schemes.
All finalists receive free entry into the Foundation Award in Amenity Horticulture course, recognised by BASIS, as well as CPD points, and the lucky winners will be able to enjoy a European Golf & Environment Trip of a Lifetime to Portugal.
The Golf Environment Awards 2019 finalists are: Environmental Golf Course of the Year
Aldeburgh Golf Club Ipswich Golf Club
Minchinhampton Golf Club Warrington Golf Club St Andrews Links
Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year
Les Rae - Montrose Golf Links Phil Stain - Notts Golf Club
Mark Broughton - Aldeburgh Golf Club Neil Sherman - Ipswich Golf Club
Outstanding Environmental Project of the Year
Wylihof Golf Club Cotswold Hills Golf Club Hallamshire Golf Club Woking Golf Club
Operation Pollinator
Wylihof Golf Club Banchory Golf Club Wigan Golf Club Corhampton Golf Club
The winners will be announced at the Golf Environment Awards Ceremony on Wednesday 23h January 2019, at The Crown Hotel in Harrogate. Tickets for the awards, which includes a three-course meal and drinks, are now on general sale. Please email
enquiries@strigroup.comfor further details.
A huge thank you also goes to Golf Environment Award partners and sponsors who continue to support and promote the awards year-on-year, without them the awards simply would not be possible: The R&A, BIGGA, The Golf Club Manager, Tillers Turf, Ransomes Jacobsen, Wiedenmann, Aquatrols, Syngenta.
Tree planting must double
Government advisers call for radical changes, including turning farmland into forests
ICL has joined forces with Royal Holloway, University of London to embark on an unique four-year research project which will look in detail at the effects of seaweed products on turfgrass plant parasitic nematodes.
The project is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and ICL.
Integral to the research project is student Tamsin Williams, who was successfully appointed following a rigorous interview process. Tamsin, who throughout the four- year project will be working with ICL to better understand how the commercial side of the sports turf industry works, believes that this studentship was a perfect fit for her ambitions to develop a career in research.
ICL will look to publish this work where possible and intend to present the data openly at a number of events. The industry will be able to gain a greater insight into the project when the research group will speak at BTME’s Continue to Learn education programme.
10 PC December/January 2019
Tree planting must double by 2020 as part of radical changes to land use in the UK, according to the government's advisers on climate change.
New forests would lock up carbon but also help to limit the more frequent floods expected with global warming.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said land currently used to produce food would need to be converted to woodland, growing crops to produce energy and for new homes to accommodate the growing population. Up to 17% of cropland and 30% of grassland could be converted, the report says.
Protecting and restoring peatland, a huge store of carbon, is also vital, as is ensuring no food waste goes to landfill by 2025, but is instead used to generate energy, it adds.
The CCC said that for decades food production had been rewarded with subsidies ahead of other public goods that land could provide, but that Brexit provided an opportunity to reward landowners for helping to fight climate change and its impacts as well as supporting wildlife.
“The incremental changes seen in the past to
how we use land is not enough,” said Chris Stark, the CCC chief executive. “There is a window now to have a more radical policy. The land is suffering.”
The environment secretary, Michael Gove, said in January: “After a transition, we will replace [subsidies for owning land] with a system of public money for public goods.”
The CCC report says the government should increase tree planting from 9,000 hectares (22,239 acres) per year to 20,000ha by 2020, then triple it to 27,000ha by 2030. This would bolster forest cover from 13% of the UK to 19% by 2050. “There are government plans to increase planting rates, but the plans have not been funded and, to date, the targets have been missed,” Stark said.
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