Sutherland MP visited Royal Dornoch Golf Club last Friday to see how nature has helped to save the Struie course from coastal erosion.
Royal Dornoch Golf Club has worked with experts from the University of St Andrews to plant sea grasses and salt marsh to stabilise the sand and hold back the sea.
MP Jamie Stone with Royal Dornoch Golf club course managr Eoin Riddell at the area of salt grass planting on the 10th hole of the Struie course.
General Manager Neil Hampton said: “When I first came here in 2010 there was erosion on the 10th hole on the second course. People were talking about putting Christmas trees along the edge of the beach, and then fencing.
“We realised that the saltmarsh on the beach was breaking up – leaving a gap, and that’s where the erosion was happening. We had to break up the power of the sea.
“We planted salt marsh plants and that broke the energy of the waves. We saved that fairway.’
Royal Dornoch worked with the Green Shores project, supported by NatureScot’s Nature Restoration Fund.
It is boosting seagrass populations there and in the Eden Estuary adjacent to St Andrews Links.
Fences and sea grass protect from erosion on the Struie Golf Course. Picture: David Bell
Royal Dornoch Golf club has worked with experts from the University of St Andrews to plant sea grasses and salt marsh to stabilise the sand and hold back the sea. Picture: David Bell
Royal Dornoch worked with the Green Shores project, supported by NatureScot’s Nature Restoration Fund. Picture David Bell
The club has 2,400 members worldwide and, with around 14,000 visitors a year, it is a major economic driver for the area.
Mr Hampton said: “The club is a very big part of how this area survives. I see what’s happening to courses in Aberdeen and Montrose and it’s scary to see people losing big chunks of their course to erosion.
“Losing a hole is a massive impact. If the layout of the course was to change, the standard of the course would go down and that may affect people’s desire to come here.
“We have to work with nature to solve this problem.”
Former club captain David Bell first picked up a club at the age of five and grew up alongside Royal Dornoch’s two courses. He’s been amazed at the effect the salt grass planting has had on Struie’s 10th hole.
He said: “What looked like it was going to fall into the sea five or six years ago is no longer the case because the grass has built up.
“Thanks to the work the team has done, there is seaweed growing around the fences and the marram grass has just started pushing out towards the shoreline.”
Mr Stone said: “What I saw at Struie golf course was most impressive. The method of protection against seawater encroach was not only ingenious, but also highly effective.
“The combination of chestnut wood fencing and planting by local schoolchildren is imaginative – and I think that this new approach to potential coastal erosion could be applied to other suitable coastal areas.”
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