Ben
As Adam says, the Mach Dunes development hasn't had a detrimental impact largely because they worked with the various interest groups and took care not to go into the sensitive areas. Same with Dumbarnie.
Niall
That is absolutely not the case. Machrihanish Dunes was built entirely within the SSSI. It avoided certain parts of the SSSI, which is why the course had so much criticism for the length of the walk. Dumbarnie was built on sandy farmland next to dunes. One is an almost entirely found course, the other is 100 per cent shaped. I like Dumbarnie, they did an excellent job, but nothing there is natural. It is very similar to Kingsbarns or Castle Stuart in that regard.
Adam
It absolutely is. I didn't say they didn't go into the SSSI, what I said was they worked with the likes SNH and avoided the sensitive areas. As you pointed out yourself there were areas at Mach Dunes that they didn't touch or weren't allowed to touch.
Niall
Your point is true in its narrow sense, but it is irrelevant. Machrihanish Dunes was, like Trump International, a course built on a SSSI, though they were done very differently, obviously. MD was permitted by guaranteeing that there would be, essentially,
no disturbance of the ground, except for building tees and greens. Where native plants were dug up, they had to be
replaced facing in the same direction. The level of oversight from SNH was massive -- there was a full time SNH observer during the build, and to be honest at first the relationship between SNH and the golf crew was pretty adversarial. That is why so many parts of the site were ruled off-limits at first, with inevitable consequences for the golf course, most notably for the quality of the walk. What could be done in terms of conditioning was minimal, which is why, over the years, there have been so many complaints from (uninformed) golfers about the conditioning of the golf course. Over time, SNH and the golf team built a relationship and came to understand each others priorities. The golf team realised that SNH was out to protect the site, but not totally prevent the golf course, and the SNH team came to realise that the interests of golf were best served by protecting the site, not by raping it.
This is entirely different from what happened at Trump Aberdeen, where planning was gained by grandstanding to national politicians, and therefore was granted without any of the same conditions of oversight. Consequence: whatever you think of the golf course, the SSSI was destroyed and has had its designation removed, because it does not exist anymore.
Those two projects are, as far as I am aware, the only times in recent years that new golf has been permitted within the boundaries of a SSSI. There is no valuable analogy with Dumbarnie, with Kingsbarns, or with Castle Stuart: fine courses all, but courses built on 'normal' sandy sites and shaped to resemble natural dunes. There was never any attempt to win permission to build within the SSSI at Dumbarnie: the golf course sits on former farmland that was shaped (very well) by Paul Kimber and his team (Paul was the on site manager for the design, which was obviously done by Clive Clark) to resemble natural duneland. I am deliberately avoiding emotive language like 'fake links'. But it is a normal, shaped golf course. MD is not, and Coul if it happens will not be.