KEY POINTS:
Clint Eastwood, the Hollywood actor turned small-town mayor and a cast of celebrity backers, have been denied permission to cut down more than 15,000 rare pine trees and build a private golf course on California's Monterey peninsula.
One of America's most loved natural landscapes, where ocean breakers roll onto a shoreline dotted with windblown pines, the peninsula is the backdrop of countless photographs and tourist postcards. Windblown and often mist shrouded it is a highlight for many visitors to the West Coast of America.
Seen from a distance it is an apparently pristine primeval forest, one of only five stands of Monterey pine left in existence. But appearances are deceptive, as the forest, which is accessible only by a 17-mile private toll road around the rugged coastline, already been chopped up by development, including some 3,000 expansive homes, country clubs with no less than eight private golf courses.
Mr Eastwood, who lives in Monterey and was once mayor of nearby Carmel town was determined to build yet another private links. Designed by the golf legend Arnold Palmer the 18-hole golf course, would have included a fancy driving range and an equestrian centre. There would also have been 60 apartments and two luxury hotels, already pre-sold to investors - the Inn at Spanish Bay and the Lodge at Pebble Beach.
The new course would have been carved out of 150 acres of native Monterey pine forest that still remain between the other eight golf courses. It would have destroyed the habitat of an endangered orchid, called the Yadon's piperia and removed wetlands and other habitat used by wildlife. California red-legged frog made famous by Mark Twain's story about jumping frog contests, and already threatened with extinction would have come under still more pressure.
The reversal is a bitter pill for the developers. They have been determined to get a return on their investment since buying the Pebble Beach Company nearly 20 years ago from Japanese owners for $820 million. In so doing they have used every trick in the book to overcome the objections of environmentalists and local residents, ultimately failing after a decision by the California Coastal Commission.
"In my 20 years of attending the Coastal Commission's meetings, this is the most egregious example of development trying to circumvent the Coastal Act," said Sara Wan, one of the Commissioners told the Los Angeles Times.
"It amounts to wholesale destruction of the environment, [and] destroys the essence of the Monterey pine forest." Even after the reversal the developers maintained that their plans would have protected the forest in the long run.
"Obviously we are saddened and disappointed that the commission didn't see the benefits of developing a small portion of the forest and putting the remainder in permanent protection," said Anthony Lombardo, for Pebble Beach Co. "We are going to step back and look at our options."
But despite the lobbying of Mr Eastwood, the knowledge that the development would have seen up to 18,000 trees fall to the chainsaw, most of them the region's signature Monterey pines, the filling in of wetlands and changes to a fragile coastal habitat with unforeseen consequences ultimately doomed the proposal.
The California Coastal Commission was set up 30 years ago to protect the coast from excessive development, a task it has only partially accomplished. "There's already been a century of mansion and golf development that has badly disconnected the forest," said Mark Massara, of the Sierra Club one of the country's foremost environment groups.
Monterey is a huge draw for golfers, the world over. They $475 ($633) a night to play the hallowed Pebble Beach Golf Links, laid out in 1919 many of its holes are on top of rocky outcrops and golfers have to play over incoming breakers to reach the pin. Many fail the challenge.
- INDEPENDENT
