Environmental Stewardship Guidelines: Best Management Practices for Oregon and Washington Golf Courses

History:

In the late 1990’s a forward thinking group of Pacific Northwest Golf Course Superintendents and industry leaders formed an Environmental Committee to take on the challenge of creating a document that would outline environmental stewardship guidelines and best management practices for golf courses in our region . This committee embarked upon this challenge with sincere enthusiasm and passion for the environment and industry. Due to mounting pressure from individual environmental groups, pesticide use policies made by local councils, and from state and federal agencies.

In 2000 the First Edition of the Guidelines, prepared by Dr. Michael Hindahl was published and was an important milestone for the promotion of the environmental stewardship practices at golf courses in the Pacific Northwest.

The Second Edition of the Guidelines were published in 2009 and were a comprehensive update to the initial Guidelines, incorporating significant statistical analyses of water quality data collected from Pacific Northwest golf courses.

The most recent, Third Edition published in 2020 was developed in part by using the BMP Planning Guide and Template created by the GCSAA.