Wildlife Scores on Golf Courses

Conserving America's rapidly disappearing natural world sometimes takes wildlife biologists strange places, but University of Arizona researcher Matt Goode never thought it would lead him to a golf course. Amanda Rodewald, an associate professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University in Columbus, found one-fourth of Ohio golf courses reported having woodpeckers. Goode and other scientists urge golf course designers and managers to leave natural areas around their courses' edges and between fairways with roughs that serve as connecting corridors, and to build seasonal ponds that have sloped bottoms and unmowed vegetation surrounding them.