West Mabou Beach Provincial Park and The Golf Bubble

Lorna MacNeil goCapeBreton.com - Jan. 19, 2023 Full article published here

In 2018, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources nixed Cabot’s plan for the West Mabou Beach Provincial Park, but they seem to have taken no notice of this.

Why?

I suggest that Ben Cowan-Dewar and Mike Keiser, the duo who brought golf to Inverness, suffer from existing in a golf bubble. There is no room for protected sand dunes in the bubble. The Piping Plover is shunned. The upswept moonwort will not find the fungus it needs to thrive there, nor will the threatened Olive-sided Flycatcher whistle “Quick, three beers!”

Cowan-Dewar and Keiser search the globe for spaces where “dream golf” can be played, and environmentally sensitive and ecologically rare sites are very much on the table.

As I type, Mike Keiser is trying, after the Scottish government turned him down in 2020, to build an 18-hole golf course at Coul Links in Scotland.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust has this to say after the 2020 decision: “Ultimately, it remains surprising that plans for development in one of the most protected areas in the country were allowed to go this far. Conservation charities including the Scottish Wildlife Trust were forced to commit a great deal of time, effort, and money into standing up for Coul Links, including giving evidence at a month-long public inquiry. We hope this decision will act as a clear signal that protected sites should be just that, protected.”

That Keiser is back with another proposal for Coul Links in 2022, this time with a private local hotel in the mix, tells us what we need to know in Cape Breton. Cabot is not in the business of respecting government decisions about protected land.

Read the full article here. Related Reading: Coul Links: Environmental groups voice concern at golf plans