Rio Golf Course: Wildlife Gone Wild! Until It's Not!

The National Post's Bev Wake filed a report that went viral and exaggerated (Deadspin ran with thee "news" and even Perez Hilton picked it up) about the wild animal park to be faced by golfers at the Rio Olympic Golf Course.

Wake writes:

The new Olympic Golf course is home to some unusual wildlife, including capybaras — the largest species of rodent in the world, which are a slightly cuter version of those horrible creatures from The Princess Bride.

They can reach 60 centimetres in height and can weigh up to 150 lbs.

“They chew down on the grass at night,” says Mark Johnson, director of international agronomy for the PGA Tour, “There are about 30-40 of them inside the course perimeter, but they live here and we play golf here, we co-exist.”

Wake's National Post colleague Cam Cole toured the course two days later and is the first journalist to do so (I believe). He files a positive review and notes the absence of the vicious wildlife.

So, to sum up: Campo Olimpico de Golfe, located within the Reserva de Marapendi, isn’t exactly Augusta National, but it’s not Goat Hills, either.

It is a decent-ish sort of rolling golf course inside a construction site, which — like most other sporting venues of Rio 2016 — is shooting for a completion date of “What time do they get here again?”

For all the howling about what a disaster it could turn out to be, it will be nothing like it.

It's pretty remarkable that we have arrived at Rio and the golf course, once thought to be a toxic waste dump set to pilfer a nature reserve, is thriving and that thriving could now be held against the course.

Still, I'm confident that after two weeks, and no shortage of shots of burrowing owls allowed to live on the course and other wildlife, that teh world will get to see golf courses can be wildlife friendly.