Haymaker’s Environmental Legacy -Ten years later, it’s not a golf course
Standing on the championship-distance tee box of Number Four at Haymaker Golf Course, the hole is a distant 457 yards away. If you’re a golfer of my caliber, though, your ball takes a longer and more circuitous route to the green. Slice your shot off the tee and you’re headed toward a wetland between the fairways of holes three and four. It’s there, in among the thick stands of cattails, that golfers come face to face with Haymaker’s environmental legacy. Whether searching for an errant golf ball or not, look closely and you just might see a nesting pair of sandhill cranes. In Colorado, sandhill cranes are strictly a migratory bird. Except for the northwest part of the state and the Yampa River Valley where they can be found breeding in summer. Haymaker, it turns out, happens to have its own nesting pair. When Haymaker Golf Course opened for play on Aug. 8, 1997, it filled an important niche in the Steamboat golf community, providing a public, 18-hole golf course. But it wasn’t simply about building a new course. Haymaker’s owners wanted to protect the environment of the Yampa Valley too. It was a philosophy embraced by golf course architect Keith Foster. “His concept was to make you feel like you were on your own private hole on each and every hole,” explains Haymaker superintendent Bill Whelihan. Foster accomplished that by preservingbuffer zones of native grasses in between greens. In fact, some 50 acres of native grassland were left undisturbed during construction, and in total, 54 percent of the 233-acre property is maintained as unmanaged, natural open space. To take Haymaker’s environmental commitment further, it enlisted the help of Audubon International, a New York-based environmental nonprofit organization independent of the National Audubon
Society. Haymaker officials enrolled in the group’s Audubon Signature Program, a rigorous certification that aids golf courses in incorporating environmental guidelines into their design, construction and management. On Nov. 8, 2000, Haymaker
became the first golf course in the state to earn the prestigious certification. It remains one of only two courses in Colorado to be certified, and one of just 72 worldwide. In other words, by Audubon international’s standard, Haymaker is one of the greenest golf courses in the world. “What they’ve done environmentally is really impressive,” says Nancy Richardson, director of the Audubon Signature Program. There’s plenty of Rocky Mountain wildlife to be found too, including elk, deer, beaver, fox and coyotes. “There’s a bald eagle down the road,” adds Whelihan, “and a great blue heron rookery across the street.” One species that especially caught Audubon International’s eye is the
Wilson’s phalarope, a small shorebird whose populations have been declining over the last 20 years. On one of Nancy’s first site visits to Haymaker, she spotted a
male and female feeding at the golf course’s lakes and wetlands, a sure sign
that things were going right. “We’re proud to be environmentally sensitive,” says Bill. “Early on, people didn’t really know about what we were doing environmentally. Maybe they’d come in and ask. But now, they’re really interested. They talk about what they see on the course. They’re aware of the environment and their surroundings.” In the beginning, Haymaker’s goal was to provide a high-quality golfing experience while preserving the environmental heritage. Ten years later, mission accomplished.
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