Snapping turtles are turning golf course bunkers into hatcheries

Gators straight out of Jurassic Park central casting may be roaming the Earth down south, but there’s a smaller primordial beast wreaking havoc with bunkers all across the upper end of North America.

Memorial Day weekend, apparently, is nesting season for snapping turtles -- or at least it is at Thornhill Golf & Country Club in Ontario and Wildwood Golf Club in Allison Park, Pa.

Greg McFarlane, superintendent for 19 years at the 27-hole private Canadian course, chronicled the progress of two of the many mama snappers that inhabit a naturalized pond on the 15-acre Thornhill property. One of them laid eggs in a bunker on the Long Course -- the site of Byron Nelson’s 11th consecutive PGA Tour win in August 1945 -- so club officials allowed players free drops if their balls landed anywhere near the snappers-to-be.

“We are working with Algonquin Wildlife Research Station to safely relocate the nest,” marketing manager Peter Armstrong told SB Nation via text message on Tuesday.

“We’re a golf course first and foremost,” McFarlane, an environmentalist who has greatly reduced the use of pesticides at Thornhill, told Golf Canada recently. “We also recognize that we play a big part in the natural environment that encompasses the property and we strive to preserve and enhance what Mother Nature has given us.”

Wildwood, awash with turtles from its many water hazards, is handling its turtle-nesting issue similarly, staking out the area as “ground under repair” and affording free drops.

Wildwood superintendent Tom Fisher also echoed McFarlane’s sentiments.

“You can’t screw with Mother Nature,” Fisher told Golf.com.