The Toledo City Paper depends on readers like you! Become a friend today. See membership options
The members of Highland Meadows Golf Club, a private facility in Sylvania that will host the Greater Toledo Classic tournament July 17-19, are happy to share the historic layout with a wide array of non-members who are essentially permanent residents.
The list of wildlife that make use of the habitat on the 120-plus acre golf course, its woods, waterways, and landscaped perimeter reads like the passenger manifest on Noah’s Ark – white-tailed deer, fox, barred owls, coyotes, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, opossums, red-tailed hawks, ducks, cardinals, blue jays and many more.
For Highland Meadows grounds superintendent Eric Swary, sharing the course with native wildlife makes perfect sense – since they were here first.
“One of the beautiful things about a golf course is that besides the recreational aspect, we bring a lot of value to the community in terms of providing good habitat for wildlife within the city limits,” he said.
“And we work really hard at it. These animals have been pushed out from where they used to live, and we are proud of the fact that we are much better stewards of the land and the wildlife than many people might think.”
Besides the resident wildlife, which the members see on and around the more than 100-year-old course on a daily basis, Swary said the list of transient visitors that Highland Meadows hosts each year includes bald eagles, wild turkeys and Canada geese.
Ten Mile Creek, which traces a serpentine route through the course and presents as a water hazard on at least six different holes, offers ideal refuge and habitat for a conga line of additional species, including fish, amphibians, reptiles and water-centric mammals. Swary said that for the first time, he recently saw a mink along the creek, with several of its young, called kits, close by.
“I think the wide variety of wildlife that live on and around the course is an indication of the micro-environment we have here,” Swary said. “With all of these species present — this is what it used to look like more than 100 years ago.”
The creek corridor hosts a variety of frogs, along with toads, garter snakes, painted turtles, eastern spiny softshell turtles, and snapping turtles. Under the water there are thriving populations of bass, northern pike, carp, suckers and an assortment of minnow-type schooling fish.
RELATED: Got Bait? Well Yes, She Does
“I think the healthy fish numbers are a direct reflection of the clean water you see on the property,” said Swary, a Defiance native who has been at Highland Meadows for the past six years, returning to Northwest Ohio after spending much of his career in south Florida.
The club has installed bird houses to invite more feathered flyers to take up residence, and Swary added that the course lets milkweed and native grasses proliferate at this time of year to provide valuable habitat for monarchs and other pollinators.
“Providing habitat to wildlife that has been here for a very long time – that’s what we’re here to do, and it is definitely something that we are very proud of,” he said.
The course, which in the past has hosted numerous LPGA events, this summer welcomes the Greater Toledo Classic, part of the Epson Tour, the official qualifying circuit of the LPGA. Past Highland Meadows national events have raised more than $14.6 million for 200-plus children’s charities across northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.
