LAHAINA, HAWAII
MAUI CULTURAL LANDS
Restoring paradise
When wildfires tore through Maui's west side in August 2023, killing 102 people, destroying 1,400 homes, and incinerating over 20,000 trees, the future of tourism to the Valley Isle was thrown into question. Now, with nearly 85% of the island's jobs still reliant on the tourism industry, Maui is at a crossroads. While local resorts housed 8,000 displaced residents in 40 hotels for months after the fires, many residents blamed the fire's quick spread partially on their clear-cutting and nonnative landscaping. Hoping to secure more resident housing, Maui's mayor proposed a bill to eliminate 7,000 short-term rentals by 2026, which is currently being contested. An island that has, since a strategic pivot to tourism over 40 years ago, depended on tourism for economic growth is searching for a sustainable way forward.
So when Maui officially reopened to tourism in November, it leaned more heavily into a new ethos: regenerative tourism, in which visitors volunteer and make conscious choices to support locally owned and environmentally sound businesses, with the aim of leaving the islands better because of their visit.
Maui Cultural Lands (MCL), one of the longestrunning Indigenous-owned nonprofits in west Maui, provides visitors hands-on ways to make their vacations count. Since 1999, Maui Cultural Lands has been taking volunteers out to pull invasive plants, replant baby trees, or plant native seedlings along the watershed in Honokowai.
MCL director Ekolu Lindsey, a native Hawaiian whose Lahaina house was destroyed in the fires, has welcomed hundreds of volunteers since tourists returned.
This story is from the August 05, 2024 edition of Time.
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This story is from the August 05, 2024 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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