New Trump golf resort approved in Scotland

Plans for a second golf course at Donald Trump’s estate near Aberdeen have been approved despite anger from locals over the development and concerns over its potential environmental impact.

Named the MacLeod course after the US president’s Scottish mother Mary Anne MacLeod, the development was given the green light by a committee of Aberdeenshire councillors after receiving eight votes to four.

The plans to build on the regulated coastal area will see natural waterways diverted and dynamic natural areas impacted, according to planning documents.

In its submissions to the council, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) said its concerns over potential environmental damage to the nearby coastline “had not been addressed” by the Trump Organisation.

Meanwhile one public opposer from Stirling said he objected as “this money making endeavour for Mr Donald Trump will once again severely affect the natural habitat and landscape of Scotland, a country that he is interested in only for its economic value, and for which he does not mind destroying to make himself a profit.”

The 18 holes have been given approval subject to 15 conditions – with the council seeking assurances the course will not harm the biodiversity of the area, including plans to preserve protected species like badgers and otters.

The course is due to be accompanied by a more-controversial major housing development – including 550 luxury houses and holiday homes as well as a hotel – as part of a separate application.

Speaking after the vote Councillor Isobel Davidson, the committee’s chairwoman and one of four councillors who moved to reject the course, said “the environmental impact of the application is overwhelming.”

In June the Trump Organisation faced criticism for the treatment of the Menie land it has already developed after its first golf course was established in 2012.

SNH said they would seek to remove some of the area from its listings as a site of special scientific interest – arguing the president’s development had “destroyed” the dynamic natural region as a home to wildlife.

The land covered by the current golf course makes up 15% of the surrounding Foveran area’s sand dunes, a type of habitat that is globally rarer than rainforests and rapidly disappearing from the planet.

During consultation for the latest course, Entomologist Dr Mark Young warned that the surrounding grasslands and marshes are a habitat “for many scarce and local invertebrates”.

He added that “the construction of the golf course will lead inevitably to a direct loss of much of these areas”, and that if the application were granted, councillors were “accepting a significant loss in what is currently an important semi-natural area”.

In 2012 a paper from the Zoological Society of London warned one in five of the world’s invertebrate species were under threat of extinction, with habitat loss one of the most significant threats to species.