Wetlands in the city, most of them in critical condition, could be enabled to create golf courses open to the public, according to a proposal of Councillor Carlos Orlando Ferreira.
Ferreira, Cambio Radical party, presented the tentative designs for what would be the wetland areas in Jaboque and twisted in the west, and in the extensive park Entrenubes south of the capital.
Ferreira believes that commercial and recreational use of wetlands, particularly through golf, you can save the life of one of the most degraded ecosystems in the city. By the way, says Ferreira, is a way to ‘de-elitist’ sport today is almost entirely reserved for shareholders of private clubs that can afford to devote large tracts of idle land to exercise their hobby.
“The idea is to expand the sport and bring to all people especially children in strata 0, 1 and 2 at practice, in order to provide other options for recreation,” said the councilman.
Ferreira believes that in addition to protecting the ecosystem, the golf courses create jobs with “caddies” (usually children from poor backgrounds that heavy load clubs and balls to golfers, or help them upload them to electric cars), instructors and technical personnel.
The golf courses would be created by the figure of the public sale or through agreements between the developers and the county government, according to the proposal has the support of the bench of aldermen of Radical Change, the party that directs Germain Vargas Lleras.
However, many environmentalists the idea seems an eyesore. “Converting the wetlands on golf courses is back ten years in the discussion of what to do with these ecosystems,” said Semana.com, Galindo Germain former environmental manager of the Bogotá Water Company and an advisor to the Foundation The Hutch, the which has one of the most successful models of recovery of a wetland in Suba.
Galindo explained that in 2005 the city took its policy of environmental management of wetlands after an exhaustive process of negotiation and consultation with experts and the community where it was concluded that these ecosystems should be protected areas and no recreational parks.
The idea of golf, although it may be behind the laudable intention of finding a salvation to the dying wetlands known international conventions which Colombia has signed on as the Ramsar Convention (Iran) for the conservation of wetland biodiversity, supported in law 357, 1997.
“The forest and scrub around the waters of the wetlands are essential to the lives of many birds and mammals,” said Galindo. “To do golf courses have to knock all that.”
At first glance it may seem more green the green of a golf course that seems to nail clippers and trimmed with a perfect edges of lakes that unruly tangled and muddy wetland vegetation and impenetrable. But in its apparent natural disorder is where its value and environmental wealth.
“A golf course may seem more attractive or more ordered to a wetland, in the same way that planting pine trees or palm may seem more orderly than a cloud forest or mangrove”, wrote last month Gustavo Wilches, expert environmental disaster and author of “What’s that, Sustainable Development?” criticizing the idea of making lawn greens wetlands.
“We have very good experiences as recovery and the ecological, social and pedagogical wetland of The Hutch, why not follow those examples that have been developed here?” Continued Wilcox.
For its part, the Secretary of Environment, Bogotá, Juan Antonio Nieto ruled that the District is contemplating supporting the initiative Ferreira. “There is no possibility of authorizing a golf course in a wetland or in their rounds,” said the secretary.
Today, five of the 13 wetlands with which the city are in critical condition “the progressive degradation of the ecosystem, its irreversibility and the misuse of the soil, which exacerbates environmental degradation, threatening the water supply of the city, “according to a report of the Personality of Bogota a year ago which calls for mayor to order the environmental warning in these ecosystems.
For example, just to cite two dramatic cases, the wetland Roof, with an area of 11.6 hectares, is urbanizing at 85 percent. And the El Burro has 75 percent of informal and illegal constructions, the report said.
In less than 50 years, the Bogotá wetlands area was reduced from 50,000 to 667 hectares. This means that now remains only slightly more than 1 percent of these areas, home to many unique species in the world, including many birds as Tingua Bogota.
For the period of 2008, the Water Company, the company responsible for its administration, had a budget of close to 23 billion pesos, for adequacy, environmental protection and management of wetlands. But with the entry into force of Bogotá Positiva Development Plan, the mayor Samuel Moreno, was reduced to just under nine billion dollars, ie 61 percent less than budgeted.
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Tags: golf, golf areas, golf coursesCategory : Golf