SOUTHPORT - Conrad Broussard stopped the golf cart near the 12th hole and pointed to a little rise in the course. It was mulched with pine bark and sprouting wire grass, broom sedge and wax myrtle -- native plants to coastal North Carolina.

"This could be all turf grass," said Broussard, director of agronomy at St. James Plantation golf community in Brunswick County. "It would have been easy to put down grass and mow. We left it natural."

Leaving the area natural means it does not require watering, fertilizing or constant mowing -- damaging practices that have given golf courses a bad environmental reputation.

But some courses, such as St. James Plantation, are embracing environmentally friendly practices and working with Audubon International, a nonprofit conservation group that sponsors a cooperative sanctuary program. Since the early 1990s, Audubon has helped courses combine ecologically responsible practices with day-to-day operations. It has transformed about 3 percent of the nation's courses into mini-sanctuaries for birds and wildlife.

Of the more than 600 golf courses around the country that have the Audubon sanctuary designation, 18 are in North Carolina. St. James Plantation, a gated community with about 1,600 homes, has the distinction of having three and is working to get certification for its newest, which opened in July.

In the Triangle, Wakefield Plantation and Brier Creek Country Club have courses recognized by Audubon.

To join its sanctuary program, Audubon requires golf courses to draw up environmental plans, conserve water and educate community members about the benefits of responsible environmental practices.

"Golf courses quite often get a reputation of being water wasters and of putting down a lot of chemicals," said Jeremy Taylor, staff ecologist for Audubon International, which is based in Selkirk, New York. "A lot of them have found they are able to save money ... by not using as much water and not using as many pesticides."

Todd Lawrence, golf course superintendent at Wakefield Plantation in Raleigh, said the Tournament Players Club has been a certified Audubon sanctuary since November 2004.

"We want to show how golf courses are environmentally friendly and help the environment, not hurt it," Lawrence said.

The 217-acre course has 20 acres of native grasses that provide corridors for deer, turkey, foxes and other wildlife. It also has 20 bluebird houses scattered around the course. Staff and volunteers keep track of how many birds hatch each year.

"We check those every two weeks during the nesting seasons," Lawrence said. "Last year we fledged over 180 bluebirds out of 20 boxes."

Given the success of the bluebird houses, Lawrence plans to install bat boxes next. Bats eat insects, so more bats mean less need for insecticides.

"They're there anyway," Lawrence said. "You might as well give them some place to live to help control insects. They eat mosquitoes."

In addition to fostering wildlife habitats with more natural areas, the Audubon program encourages re-use of water, reduction in the use of chemicals, and the creation of buffers around ponds to filter runoff.

Broussard said St. James conserves fuel because it doesn't need to mow and spray as often, and it saves money by using less fertilizer and pesticides. By testing the soil and applying only as much fertilizer to an area as needed, he said, a course may use one truckload of phosphorous fertilizer rather than the four loads a typical golf course would spread on its grounds.

St. James, which is permitted to use up to 750,000 gallons of water a day on its courses, uses reclaimed water from the local sewage treatment plant. It's treated wastewater that is good for irrigation but doesn't meet drinking water standards.

Every other year, the community stocks its 60 or so ponds with grass carp, which eat aquatic vegetation and algae. That reduces the need for chemicals to control the grasses.

Taylor, of Audubon International, said the program doesn't require courses to go chemical free but does seek to limit the use of chemicals

"We're not going to stop development from happening," Taylor said. "We want to help it happen in the most environmentally friendly way."