Written by: David Gray
2026
Between August 2023 and March 2025, Fife Golf Trust delivered a landscape-scale nature restoration programme across its seven municipal golf courses. It was a longstanding aspiration to do something significant for biodiversity, and the ambitious project was made possible with support from Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund, managed by NatureScot.
The project aimed to enhance, create and connect habitats across the 544ha landholding to maximise biodiversity potential on the courses and create rich, multi-functional spaces for wildlife and people. Outputs totalling 28ha included:
• Planting 8.7ha native woodland, copses and treelines
• Bringing 17.28ha grassland into meadow management
• Planting 1070m native mixed hedgerows
• Creating five wetland mosaics and two wetland scrapes amounting to c. 2.03ha
• Establishing three new ponds and enhancing one pond amounting to c. 450m2
• Naturalising 3560m2 linear freshwater habitat including ditches and small watercourses
• Developing seven bee banks
• Removing 2000m redundant fencing to improve permeability to wildlife
• Installing five barn owl boxes, two tawny owl boxes and 28 bat boxes
