Call me a dreamer, but when I imagine bulldozers carving up the back nine holes at Lester Park Golf Course, I get sick. The thought that wild animals, amphibians, and avians living their quiet, purposeful lives in the relative tranquility of ponds and forested thickets will have their homeland plowed under, mowed down, and paved over is way more sickening than the prospect of losing part of one of the most scenic golf courses in Minnesota (Our View: "Let good info lead to good golf decisions," March 14).
No amount of hard sell about some high-rolling developer's bright shiny resort, no half-baked trade-off for tax-forfeiture acreage, and certainly no amount of discussion about decreased rounds of golf or years of accumulated debt should be considered in this discussion about the future of public golf in Duluth.
Preserving green space is absolutely critical on this increasingly overdeveloped, suffering planet. And Lester Park is much more than just green space. It's home to threatened species of turtles, woodpeckers, and waterfowl. It's a stopover space for Lapland longspurs, mergansers, and Baltimore orioles. It's on the flight path of migrating red-tailed hawks and bald eagles. And it's a safe harbor for snapping turtles, Eastern painted turtles, and the rapidly disappearing leopard frogs that now are virtually extinct.
There are plenty of resorts in our Northland already. There are not plenty of pileated woodpeckers. If our City Council members look only at dollars and cents in this debate instead of the big picture, they will make a decision that makes no sense. There are plenty of ways to improve the bottom line of Lester Park Golf Course without selling out.
The most prophetic line ever written by folk-singing legend Joni Mitchell is in "Big Yellow Taxi." It goes, "You don't know what you've got til it's gone." Please, let's not pave any more of our paradise.
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Phil Fitzpatrick
Duluth
