A community group bidding to create a bitterly disputed golf course has been attacked as an "astroturfing front" for sharing an address with the US developers tipped to build it - and because the group plans to disband if the bid is successful. Communities for Coul (C4C) is applying for planning permission for a "world-class" golf course at Coul Links, an important coastal wildlife site north of the Dornoch Firth. But The Ferret has seen evidence that the group's meeting place and postal address is the same as that used by a golf development company run by two US businessmen. The company, Coul Links Limited, was set up by Americans Todd Warnock and Mike Keiser, to promote their previous plan for a golf course at the site. This was rejected by Scottish ministers in 2020 because of fears it would damage "protected habitats and species". C4C has also said it will disband if it wins planning permission for the golf course. It then plans to hand over the development to Keiser, a billionaire businessman and builder of golf courses from Chicago. Local campaigners accused C4C of being a "sham" and a "stalking horse" for Warnock and Keiser. They are expecting its planning application to be considered by Highland Council on 12 September - and they want it to be rejected. C4C said Coul Links Limited had been "extremely helpful" in sharing information and the shared address was "convenient" for collecting correspondence. C4C described itself as a not-for-profit community company with five British directors who lived locally. The proposal for making Coul Links into a golf course was first put forward by Warnock and Keiser in 2016. But it ran into fierce opposition from environmental groups who said it would harm a unique network of sand dunes home to rare plants, insects and birds. Trump 2.0: new row over golf and wildlife Highland Council gave the golf course the go-ahead, but this was overturned by the Scottish Government in February 2020. Then, in 2021, C4C was formed "to gain planning permission for a new, environmentally sensitive, world-class golf course on Coul Links". C4C claimed the new golf course had community support, with nearly 70 per cent of people backing it in a ballot. But environmental groups, including the government's wildlife agency, NatureScot, have again come out against it. Now an email released under freedom of information law - and seen by The Ferret - has disclosed links between Warnock and Keiser's company, Coul Links Limited, and C4C. In January 2023 the company asked the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) to use Coul Farm as a postal address for golf course irrigation licences. "We would like to change the correspondence name for Coul links Ltd to [redacted] at links house," the email said. "Or if possible to Coul Farm itself as it's easier to collect mail etc, or indeed both." Coul Farm is a holiday home belonging to the Coul Links landowner, Edward Abel Smith. He has won initial planning permission for a £20m hotel development there, which is dependent on the golf course going ahead. Coul Farm is also used as a meeting place by C4C, and is the address cited on its Facebook page. C4C told The Ferret that it was a "convenient spot" for C4C members to collect correspondence about the Sepa licences. At the same time, C4C said it will dissolve if it wins planning permission for the golf course. "When this is all finished, C4C will disband," the group's spokesperson, Graham Sutherland, told a meeting of Dornoch Community Council in May 2023. "We're only here to take the planning application through." The disclosures have angered a local group opposing the golf course. From the moment C4C said it would disband, its promise to build an environmentally-friendly golf course "disappeared out the window", said Dr Tom Dargie, the lead campaigner from Not Coul. "Everything C4C since early 2021 has been a sham, their local support misled. It is now obvious that C4C is the astroturfing front for the 2017 deve...