Published Date: Apr 4th, 2025
Fife Golf Trust (FGT) has been celebrating a commendation at the VIBES Scottish Environment Business Awards.
FGT, which was established in 2012 and based in Kirkcaldy, manages seven golf courses on behalf of Fife Council, and is responsible for a greenspace area of almost 550 hectares.
The business received recognition in the Nature Rich Scotland Award category at VIBES, which celebrates businesses that are leading the way in the transition to a net zero economy, reducing waste, and promoting sustainable practices.
FGT has embedded biodiversity gains and sustainability into their day-to-day operations via their Sustainable Management Strategy and their work is a formal part of the Fife Local Biodiversity Action Plan.
They also have International Golf Environment Organisation (GEO) certification, placing them into the same arena as commercial golf courses such as the St Andrews Links Trust and Carnoustie Golf Links.
The business engages widely with local nature and biodiversity groups, charities, and other businesses, both within and out with the sector, to share good practice and support the delivery of their initiatives.
As a small charitable trust, the business uses this partnership working and collaboration with others to overcome some of the financial barriers that they could face to implementing some measures.
They have achieved significant biodiversity improvements including the creation of 17 hectares of meadow and over 8 hectares of woodland, 7 new wetlands, 4 new ponds, a ‘bee bank’ on each course and nearly 2km of watercourses planned for naturalisation. They undertake regular monitoring of the nature benefits, and the data is shared with Fife Nature Records Center.
Their ‘Seven Golf Courses for Nature’ model is helping to build resilience and climate adaptation.
The wetland areas are in places where flooding has become problematic, providing a natural solution to alleviate the issue and are allowing plants and wildlife to flourish.
The reprofiling of the watercourses that run through the sites will help naturalise straight, steep-sided ditches, encouraging freshwater habitat to establish and help alleviate local downstream settlements with flooding issues, by slowing up the movement of the water.
Fife Golf Trust has achieved significant year-on-year cost savings and vastly improved course quality through a strict management approach in the use of fertilisers, fungicides and herbicides and reducing their water consumption for irrigation by 40% through use of PoGo meters to regularly measure and monitor exact soil moisture levels. This revenue saving is used to drive further sustainability improvements across the golf courses.
The business has piloted an innovative 'Golf for Health' partnership with the Royal & Ancient and St Andrews University around ‘golf prescriptions’ to improve patients' health and wellbeing. The pilot had 30 participants in 2023, and FGT hosted with the help of their PGA pro Ally McDonald.
They’ve also designed and built a 6-hole ‘Park Golf’ course for the less able at their Dunnikier site, which was a catalyst for introducing the Japanese game of Park Golf to Scotland.
Fife Golf Trust provide a quality, affordable, accessible, all abilities nature-based activity (golf) for over 3000 members.
The 2019 Course at Dunnikier Park Golf Course has a diverse range of regular customers including local school pupils, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation group, Alzheimer Scotland, and a bereavement support group, demonstrating their ethos of ‘Golf for All’.
David Gray, golf courses manager, said: “Fife Golf Trust are honoured to receive this fantastic award which recognises the positive contribution we have made to nature and the environment as land managers.
"We are passionate about practicing sustainable golf course management, and whilst we manage our greenspaces primarily for golf, we ensure these spaces have a diverse ecosystem promoting a wonderful habitat for wildlife.
"Our recent Nature Restoration Fund project allowed us to intensify our biodiversity and ecological commitments, and to have this hard work recognised is a significant milestone for us.
"We would like to thank all FGT staff and volunteers for their hard work delivering the project, our funders NatureScot for making the project possible, and to the judges for identifying our environmental contribution."
Our photo above shows (left to right) David Gray, Golf Courses Manager, Paul Murphy CEO, and Heather Young, Conservation Officer.
You can also watch a video highlighting Fife Golf Trust's story here.
