Beside a restored creek in San Geronimo, California, birds soar where birdies once were scored. Formerly home to an 18-hole golf course, the 157-acre property has been rewilded into a thriving nature preserve.
The fairway, once groomed to unnatural perfection, is now overgrown with tall grass and wildflowers. Putting greens have become pastures. A sand trap serves as a children’s play area.
Vitally, the creek that runs through the course’s front nine – no longer impeded by a dam – is seeing a slow return of the endangered coho salmon.
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Former golf courses are growing wild again, increasing the amount of public green space in the U.S. In the process, they are teeing up solutions for long-standing environmental challenges.
The San Geronimo Golf Course closed in 2018 after six decades, becoming part of a growing movement to rethink how green space can better serve the public. With the number of golf course closures outweighing openings every year since 2006, some are rethinking the best use of these open spaces. In states such as Florida, Ohio, Massachusetts, and California, nature is now being allowed to run its course to protect wildlife and protect against storms.
Golf courses are often criticized for their environmental toll in terms of water use and biodiversity loss. But Todd Steiner sees San Geronimo as “a blessing in disguise.”
“While golf courses have environmental impacts, it’s all relative. If houses were built, that would have been worse for coho,” says Mr. Steiner, founder of the conservation group Turtle Island Restoration Network, overlooking the restored creek. “The fact that it remained open space allowed us to dream of what it could be.”
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California’s recent removal of four dams on the Klamath River – the largest dam removal project in U.S. history – is a landmark effort to restore salmon habitats. But it’s not happening in isolation.
Across the country, communities are quietly reimagining what green space can be. In Marin County, the removal of a small dam at the San Geronimo Golf Course is part of this growing shift: from manicured landscapes to places designed for biodiversity and climate resilience.
San Geronimo Creek is the largest undammed tributary in the Lagunitas Creek Watershed. Two years ago, 50,000 coho salmon smolts emigrated from the watershed, nearly 400% above the average count, according to Marin Water.
The case for rewilding
The San Geronimo Golf Course was built in the 1960s in anticipation of a suburb that never materialized. Over the decades, owners came and went. But one figure remained constant: Mr. Steiner, an ecologist with a passion for restoring the local creek.
For more than 30 years, Mr. Steiner worked to remove a defunct dam and revive the stream’s natural flow – all while golfers teed off just yards away. When the course closed permanently in 2018, he saw an opportunity to reimagine the land as a wildlife sanctuary.
At first, the idea of turning a golf course into a nature preserve was met with skepticism. But as Mr. Steiner shared his vision, hearts and minds began to shift.
“People started to realize that biodiversity is essential for our own survival,” says Gail Yamamoto Seymour, a retired supervisor with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. With climate change intensifying, she says, the community became more invested in protecting the local ecosystem.
Tripp Heller was among the skeptics. He had been a nature-loving golfer at the San Geronimo course for over a decade and had preferred it to stay that way. These days he’s on board with the nature preserve, saying, “It’s outperformed my expectations and potential disappointments.”
It’s become clear to him that the land is being managed well, he says, adding that there’s much more public use by dog walkers, families with children, and bird-watchers.
“I certainly miss the golf course, but the ecological benefits outweigh it,” he says.
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The golf capital of the U.S.
The movement has even hit Florida, a red state with the most golf courses in the country.
In 2010, after an 18-hole course in Englewood closed, a nonprofit bought the land and invested $2 million to remove invasive species, improve water quality, and rewild the site. The 80-acre Lemon Bay Conservancy’s Wildflower Preserve now boasts mangroves, ponds, and walking trails – and has a vital role in storm resilience.
For years, the preserve offered important habitat for freshwater species. Last year, it also helped protect surrounding neighborhoods as hurricane storm surges sent salt water from the Gulf across Englewood. Much of that water was absorbed into the preserve’s wetland systems – although the impact of the salt water was devastating on many of the freshwater fish and plants.
“Almost all of it is lower elevation than the surrounding neighborhood,” says Eva Furner, a board member with the Lemon Bay Conservancy.
She says she gets calls regularly from other communities looking to rewild golf courses. A recent inquiry came from Cape Coral, Florida, where the city had recently purchased 175 rolling acres of a former golf course and hoped to turn them into a nature reserve.
Where fairways turn wild
Some 300 miles south of San Geronimo, the former Ocean Meadows Golf Course in Santa Barbara has undergone a similar transformation.
When the relatively flat, nine-hole golf course closed in 2013, the Trust for Public Land purchased the land and later donated it to the University of California, Santa Barbara. The university spent the next decade restoring the property into a wetland to reduce flooding in nearby neighborhoods and create habitat for waterfowl like mallards, coots, and Canada geese.
The nature preserve has been a huge boon to the community, says Carla D’Antonio, a professor in the university’s ecology, evolution, and marine biology department.
The expanded wetlands act as a natural sponge – absorbing floodwaters during heavy rains and providing a buffer against sea-level rise in the decades ahead, she adds.
“Residents next to the wetlands no longer deal with moldy, flooded foundations. Plus, rare species have been reintroduced and are thriving,” says Dr. D’Antonio over email.
Beyond the green
Back in San Geronimo, a closely guarded nest is teeming with baby salmon.
It’s a sign the restoration is already yielding results. This year, Mr. Steiner and his team counted about 300 coho salmon nests – more than they’ve seen in two decades. It’s a promising milestone, even if the numbers remain a fraction of what once existed.
“We’re still a long way from truly saving the species,” says Ms. Yamamoto Seymour, now a board member of Mr. Steiner’s conservation group. “But success stories like San Geronimo show that extinction can be prevented. It’s a model other communities can follow.”
Progress, Mr. Steiner says, is measured in patience. “It will take time, but we’re repairing the mistakes we made back when we didn’t know any better.”
