New Satellite Images Reportedly Show That Trump's Scotland Golf Course Wrecked a Sand Dune System
21:37 GMT 16.10.2021 (Updated: 18:53 GMT 19.10.2022)
© AFP 2023 / Andy Buchanan
Subscribe
In December 2020, Scotland's nature agency announced that the coastal sand dunes at then-US President Donald Trump's Aberdeenshire golf resort had lost their status as a protected environmental site. The agency claimed the dunes were a "high quality example" of a geological system in Scotland, but no longer merited the governmental safeguard.
New satellite images show that a collection of ecologically sensitive dunes at the former US president's 'Trump International Golf Links, Scotland' have been partially destroyed, according to a new report from Business Insider.
Satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies in March 2010 and April 2021 closely detail the Menie Estate strip of the Foveran Links, where Trump's golf course is located. The resort opened in 2012.
Satellite photos show how Trump wrecked a sensitive sand dune system in Scotland to build a luxury golf course: Trump built a luxury golf resort in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 2012. The sand dune system on which the course is now almost completely… https://t.co/U84Z4UbRPr pic.twitter.com/aHCMpOhqsL
— you-betterknow (@BetterknowYou) October 15, 2021
Trump purchased the strip of coastal land in 2006, promising that the site would contain "the world's greatest golf course."
The real estate tycoon also reassured environmentalists in November 2008 that he would "stabilize the dunes" and protect them from further destruction.
"They will be there for ever," Trump said, as reported by The Scotsman. "This will be environmentally better after [the resort] is built than it is before."
John Swinney, Scotland's finance secretary at the time, declared that Trump's golf course would have "a significant economic and social benefit" for Scotland.
Fast-forward to 2019 as NatureScot, Scotland's nature agency, said that although Foveran Links were "a very high-quality example of a sand dune system," they had also suffered damage to one-third of its special habitats in recent years.
Before and after.
— Glenn Campbell (@GlennBBC) June 28, 2019
How Donald Trump’s award-winning golf course has “destroyed” the sand dune system at Menie, Aberdeenshire causing permanent habitat loss
Watchdog @nature_scot is now recommending the site loses its special environmental protection as a SSSI pic.twitter.com/jVQBROpecz
The damage prompted officials to reconsider designating the Foveran Links a site of special scientific interest (SSSI).
"The denotification of SSSIs is unusual, however in this case we have found there is no longer a reason to protect the dunes at Menie as they do not include enough of the special, natural features for which they were designated," said Sally Thomas, the agency's director of people and nature.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, explained to the Insider that sand dunes are dynamic and stabilization attempts by the resort had "killed it as a natural environment."
"So they've essentially planted vegetation on top of them and put physical constraints on them so the dunes can't move and it's not a dynamic system anymore," Ward explained.
