Trump golf course destroyed Scottish dunes he promised to preserve

Before-and-after photos show that Donald Trump broke his promise to stabilize and preserve coastal sand dunes at his golf course in Scotland.

Locals opposed the development after Trump purchased a stretch of coastal land in Aberdeenshire in 2006, but the celebrity real estate developer moved ahead with construction of an 18-hole golf course and promised not to disturb the highly sensitive ecosystem, reported Insider.

"We will stabilize the dunes," Trump vowed at the time. "They will be there forever. This will be environmentally better after it is built than it is before."

However, before-and-after satellite images from technology firm Maxar show the development destroyed the Foveran Links sand dunes between March 2010 and April 2021.

The photos obtained by Insider show the golf course was constructed over the marshes, dune grassland and dune slacks, destroying what the conservation agency NatureScot called "a very high-quality example of a sand dune system characteristic of north east Scotland, and was of exceptional importance for the wide variety of coastal landforms and processes."

The development stopped the dunes from moving backward and forward, as they're supposed to do in reaction to the wind, according to environmental experts.

"The argument the Trump International Golf Links used was that they'd protected them by stabilizing them," said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. "But essentially what they've done is they've just killed it as a natural environment."