Last year about this time we revived our certificate in Environmental planning from Audubon International. Since then we have been gathering valuable data to become an official Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary for Golf courses. Over the last year we have compiled important data on wildlife and habitat management, water conservation and water quality & management. Over the next months we will attempt to complete outreach and education and chemical use reduction and safety. When all of the criteria has been met we will receive our final certification. The entire process has been a labor of love. It is interesting to see how many practices we had in place to protect the environment before we started this journey with Audubon International. We just had to put all of our standard record keeping and documentation into one binder.
Here are just some of the items we have gathered or started...
- Pictures (wildlife and natural areas)
- Continuing with organic fertilizers
- Water tests
- Maps of vegetation
- Maps of habitat
- Wildlife lists
- Water conservation methods
- Irrigation records
- Increasing wildlife habitat
- Natural areas around lake body's
- No mow areas
- Low impact native areas
- Planting native plant material
