Shovel holes.
This is the discovery made this weekend on the course of the National Golf of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, located in Guyancourt.
Individuals entered the site and dug several small craters around hole number 18 of this site hosting prestigious international competitions, like the Ryder Cup in 2018.
The action was not claimed on the spot but the group Extinction Rebellion Paris – Île-de-France echoed it on social networks.
A poster with the inscription "Green not very green" was left on the spot, probably to protest against the maintenance of the golf course in times of drought.
On Twitter, the group denounces "this leisure industry which benefits a privileged minority and which benefits from exemptions on water restrictions, even though France is hit by an unprecedented drought and the agricultural sector is suffering". .
🔥 Radical gardening action at the Golf National de Guyancourt
⛳️🏌️ On the night of September 16 to 17, the rebels entered the Golf National to dig holes, plant shrubs and install signs denouncing the ecological impact of golf courses.
#Golf
[1/4] pic.twitter.com/HlL9BlQtal
— Extinction Rebellion Paris / Ile-de-France (@xr_ParisIDF) September 17, 2022
Contacted, management did not respond to our requests.
Several golf courses in France were vandalized during the summer to point the finger at the water consumption devoted to this leisure activity.
Actions that had hitherto spared the Yvelines, the leading French golf department with around thirty sites and 28,000 licensees.
Only one operation had been organized last August by environmental activists at the Saint-Germain golf course: to alert on water resources, they had installed a small vegetable garden there…
Efforts made and to be made
If the golf courses do not always comment on these intrusions, the French federation wished to recall this summer in a press release that this sport "represents an economic weight of more than 1.5 billion euros in France and provides 15,000 jobs including 7,500 jobs direct in the field", including "83% of jobs on permanent contracts, of which 61% are manual workers, and cannot be relocated".
While emphasizing that the watered plots have been drastically limited due to the context.
Read alsoDrought in Île-de-France: “If tomorrow golf is to become a seasonal sport, it will become so”
For her part, the president of the Ecologist Pole at the Île-de-France Regional Council and former mayor of Évecquemont, called on professionals and elected officials to sit around a table this fall to discuss solutions to find lasting solutions.
