As a slight aside, particularly for a project on a new site could a partnership project, maybe even a joint venture, with environmentalist organisations work ... very sensitive routing, one man and a mower type construction, no irrigation, grazed by sheep and cattle, walking tracks, bird watching hides, environmental representation on committees etc etc? Pie in the sky or a possibility?
That sounds much like Machrihanish Dunes, which has been widely praised here for its light-footprint approach, or Askernish which was even lower-impact.
The problem is, has Machrihanish Dunes really been successful? Is it attracting enough visitors to succeed commercially? If not, and working that sensitively leads to a less appealing golf course which doesn't gain traction, then would it not have been better to just say no to begin with, than to promote that as a brilliant solution?
The idea that we ought to go back to "one man and a mower" seems like an overreaction. A lot of modern construction equipment has a very light footprint, so you can tiptoe around the site and make surgical changes to build features where necessary, without tearing up the whole place. I just don't see that digging a few bunkers or shaping a few features mechanically is equivalent to raping the landscape. Are there places where we shouldn't build at all? Okay, then name them. But don't restrict all "sensitive" sites to arbitrary limits on construction.
As an example, for my current project in New Zealand, there are a bunch of lines drawn in the sand on where we can or can't build. None of them make any sense to me, from a purely environmentalist standpoint. They have moved back and forth as the product of negotiation, and they are not based on features of the property -- there is no difference in the ground one side of the line vs. the other. I understand that they don't want us working right up to the beach, but compromising at 120 meters back [after arguing between 100 and 150] is political, not ecological. I'm trying to work with the landforms that are there, but the authorities are ignoring them.
As to "no irrigation", we have wrestled with that at St. Patrick's. We won't need much once the course is grown in, but to not have it at all would risk a couple of years of false starts at grow-in, which is hard to justify to the people who have invested. In the end, we're putting it in places where we need it for grow-in, with the expectation that we'll largely turn it off [except around greens and tees] once the course is open.