7 ms·

We visited Maui last year, and I was kind of shocked how desertified it is. When HC&S (I think) pulled out in 2016, they left behind untended sugarcane plantati

We visited Maui last year, and I was kind of shocked how desertified it is. When HC&S (I think) pulled out in 2016, they left behind untended sugarcane plantations and a row of huge trees to die by the highway, I think they are Moneypods: https://www.photoresourcehawaii.com/image/I0000Bzi9pq4Ok6E https://www.photoresourcehawaii.com/image/I0000Bzi9pq4Ok6E The tragedy of it is that I saw that exploitation everywhere we went. Outside of Nicaragua and Guatemala, I don't think I've ever been somewhere where the locals were as suspicious of tourists. The pandemic gutted their economy so the feeling of hopelessness hung around even relatively remote places we visited along the Road to Hana. I just want to add that the Hawaiian islands have (I think) all climates represented and are dryer than expected, especially the lower islands which don't have trees on the mountains to catch rainwater. Which may even add a familiar appeal for mainlanders traveling there. But it was apparent that large swaths of native vegetation were cleared for colonization. I just don't see how fire management would work when an entire community has had its resources stolen for a century or more.

scottrogers86 3y ago
>I don't think I've ever been somewhere where the locals were as suspicious of tourists. The pandemic gutted their economy so the feeling of hopelessness hung around even relatively remote places we visited along the Road to Hana. I went to Maui last year for the first time. I've visited Kauai in my teens (we had family who lived there) this was the vibe then that they described -- tourists are generally not accepted, esp at the local surf spots. I actually found Maui more welcoming.
- bink 3y ago
  To be fair, even locals aren't accepted at many surf spots if they aren't regulars. That's true on the mainland as well.
  - ambicapter 3y ago
    "To be fair, the situation is even worse than you describe" I think this is called damning with faint praise?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - danenania 3y ago
      Point is this is (unfortunately imo) part of surf culture in general and isn't specific to Hawaii. Hawaii is known for localism, but so are many other places around the world. Santa Cruz CA, for example, is one of the worst.
    - trealira 3y ago
      "Damning with faint praise" is more like when you try to think of some good quality in someone but fail. Something like this: "What were your parents like when you were a child?" "They were fine; they even let us make friends with other children sometimes." Actually, I guess this really is a "damning with faint praise situation."
  - trafficante 3y ago
    The gatekeeping makes absolute sense if you hop on YouTube to see the difference in behavior between Waikiki and even the more well known spots on the North Shore.
- tayo42 3y ago
  i always hear this but i surfed all over hawaii (kauai north and south, oahu north shore and bowls, mauis west side and honolua bay) and never had an issue and ppl have been between friendly and neutral to me.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I've had similar experiences (not surfing) where people say "place X hates tourists" or "don't go to Y they don't like Americans" but have never run into any notable issues. I suspect that for some people "neutral" is "hates my guts" or something, or some people are stereotypically tourists in such a way that it'd piss people off in their hometown.
    - mcculley 3y ago
      I have similarly not had the problems others describe. I suspect that many people need a guide or lesson on how to be good tourist/guest. Too many act entitled as tourists. I push back at home on what I perceive as poor service or behavior from civil servants. Abroad, I try to not expect that everything is done as in my home culture. Just having the right attitude makes others less unfriendly.
    - sdsd 3y ago
      >don't go to Y they don't like Americans As an American, this has been my experience with French people. Everyone tells me how rude they are, and how they dislike Americans. Meanwhile, I've met a ton of French people and they have all been absolutely wonderful, polite, and totally friendly. Actually, I brought this up the first time I met two Frenchmen when I was 19 in NYC. They were tourists and I was surprised and mentioned that I was under the impression that French people disliked Americans, and they said "No, we love them! Just maybe in Paris, you will not like it, but the rest of France is much better!" Idk what to take from that, but the point is, French people are great ime.
      - 7thaccount 3y ago
        I've heard many places still remember (at least generational memory) of America liberating France from the Nazis.
JJMcJ 3y ago
Also the Hawaiians never got any kind of tribal status relative to the United States, so they have no autonomous institutions. Hawaiians in the ethnic sense. I believe in Hawaii itself it's customary to only call someone Hawaiian if they have that ethnic background.
- JJMcJ 3y ago
  > only call someone Hawaiian Example in recent days, President Biden referred to "residents of Hawaii" as getting assistance, rather than "Hawaiians".
munificent 3y ago
> and are dryer than expected That's not from colonization or vegetation clearing. The Hawaiian islands are all produced by volcanos. Especially for the younger islands to the east, that means they are shaped like very tall cones. With prevailing winds from the east, the western side of the islands are in the rain shadow of the mountains and are much drier than the eastern sides. The effect is very pronounced and visible on satellite photos of the big island. The west side is dry and desert-like, and the east side is a lush tropical jungle. The western sides of these islands would be deserts even if no human ever set foot on them.
hparadiz 3y ago
I lived near Lahaina for a year. Where the fires are going on now. That part of the island is just a natural desert because it is on the leeward side of the prevailing winds. It's a natural tinder box. The land directly adjacent to Lahaina is mostly dry grass at this time of the year. It has not been cleared. The actual farms are much greener than what is naturally there. > But it was apparent that large swaths of native vegetation were cleared for colonization Complete nonsense. Native Hawaiians were farming that land for centuries before white people showed up. People will visit Maui then make up a bunch of stuff about it without doing any actual research. Monkeypod isn't even native to Hawaii.
- duhaime 3y ago
  Monkeypods are in fact considered invasive by some, though they are one of the more forgivable invasive species: https://plantpono.org/pono-plants/samanea-saman/ https://plantpono.org/pono-plants/samanea-saman/
- hijp 3y ago
  He's not wrong. You can't compare the ahupua'a system with the large scale industrial monoculture plantations of the 1800s-and onward. https://imgur.com/OCirGip https://imgur.com/OCirGip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_plantations_in_Hawaii#Environmental_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_plantations_in_Hawaii#En...
  - hparadiz 3y ago
    The area on fire is a magnitude larger than all the land the sugar plantations ever took up. There was never any development of that land. Not today. Not ever. It's been designated a natural preserve much like 99.9% of all the jungle areas.
    - hijp 3y ago
      That's completely inaccurate. 2,000 acres burned in the maui fire. In contrast, Alexander and Baldwin sold 41,000 acres of sugar plantation land in 2018. Here's a map of the Maui fires (red dots) overlayed on sugar lands. https://imgur.com/CysWreb https://imgur.com/CysWreb, https://health.hawaii.gov/epo/egis/sugarcane/ https://health.hawaii.gov/epo/egis/sugarcane/ From NYT: “The fire problem,” he added, “is mostly attributable to the vast extents of nonnative grasslands left unmanaged by large landowners.” That shift away from plantations allowed tropical grasslands to grow untended, which built up the fuels needed for big wildfires to spread. Mr. Trauernicht, a specialist in wildland fire science and management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, refers to a “grass-fire” cycle. This happens when the heavy rains that fall across the islands cause the grasses to grow. Then the dry season arrives, and the grasses burn. “The biomass out there is off the charts,” Mr. Trauernicht said in a 2021 interview. There are ways that the authorities can limit this destructive cycle, he said. They include building firebreaks, introducing vegetation that is more resistant to fire and allowing livestock to keep grasses at a manageable level. For years, Mr. Trauernicht and other experts have been calling for such moves to mitigate Hawaii’s wildfire risks." And: "I talked to Clay Trauernicht, one of Hawaii’s top wildfire experts. His assessment: The plantations of sugarcane and pineapple that dominated the state's economy during much of the 19th and 20th centuries are mostly gone. Their disappearance, and Hawaii's heavy rains, allowed tropical grasslands to grow rapidly, replacing them. But then the dry season comes, and the grasses burn, causing destruction like we’re seeing on Maui.
legitster 3y ago
> But it was apparent that large swaths of native vegetation were cleared for colonization. Even before settlers, the land on Maui wasn't just unkempt wilderness. They had enormous Taro and fish farms. They also thinned out forests regularly. Like most agricultural societies, they actively managed their landscape. But part of the issue (besides global warming) is that nearly all of the land is going derelict for the first time. These areas have been under active management for thousands of years up until 40 years ago. And free-falling Ag revenue means that there is less money to manage it today - either subsidize new agriculture or even properly re-wild it. It would be easy enough to try to go back to pre-plantation agriculture, but Native Hawaiians today are no more interested to take up subsistence Taro farming than we would be. So there is not much of a solution either than grin and increase tourism, or get more federal subsidies and repeal the Jones Act.
- trafficante 3y ago
  > repeal the Jones Act Man do I wish more attention was given to this matter. Virtually all the national security arguments in favor of the Jones Act are either moot or straight up farcical in Current Year. It’s particularly strange when you consider this should be one of those unicorn “good” bipartisan issues with multiple reasons for right/left wing people to hop on board. Environmentalism, anti-racist (ie: Puerto Rico), huge boost to many local economies (on both the coasts and Midwest), etc. Maybe the trucking industry/unions are heavily lobbying against a repeal? It’s difficult to come up with a reasonable explanation for why Jones Act bills keep dying before they get a vote.
  - legitster 3y ago
    It boggles my mind. Someone was telling me that the Mississippi River is only using about 1/10th of its potential freight capacity when compared to equivalent European waterways or even the shipping capacity the Army Corp of Engineers maintains. For all of the attention billionaires get, I think it's a good reminder of how politics are still local. The Koch brothers dumped billions of dollars to try to reform prison sentencing and oppose the ACA and got nowhere with either. Meanwhile, a small handful of multi-generational shipping magnates in the US have had a stranglehold on the economy with the support of congress for over 100 years.

scottrogers86 3y ago

>I don't think I've ever been somewhere where the locals were as suspicious of tourists. The pandemic gutted their economy so the feeling of hopelessness hung around even relatively remote places we visited along the Road to Hana. I went to Maui last year for the first time. I've visited Kauai in my teens (we had family who lived there) this was the vibe then that they described -- tourists are generally not accepted, esp at the local surf spots. I actually found Maui more welcoming.

bink 3y ago
To be fair, even locals aren't accepted at many surf spots if they aren't regulars. That's true on the mainland as well.
- ambicapter 3y ago
  "To be fair, the situation is even worse than you describe" I think this is called damning with faint praise?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - danenania 3y ago
    Point is this is (unfortunately imo) part of surf culture in general and isn't specific to Hawaii. Hawaii is known for localism, but so are many other places around the world. Santa Cruz CA, for example, is one of the worst.
  - trealira 3y ago
    "Damning with faint praise" is more like when you try to think of some good quality in someone but fail. Something like this: "What were your parents like when you were a child?" "They were fine; they even let us make friends with other children sometimes." Actually, I guess this really is a "damning with faint praise situation."
- trafficante 3y ago
  The gatekeeping makes absolute sense if you hop on YouTube to see the difference in behavior between Waikiki and even the more well known spots on the North Shore.
tayo42 3y ago
i always hear this but i surfed all over hawaii (kauai north and south, oahu north shore and bowls, mauis west side and honolua bay) and never had an issue and ppl have been between friendly and neutral to me.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I've had similar experiences (not surfing) where people say "place X hates tourists" or "don't go to Y they don't like Americans" but have never run into any notable issues. I suspect that for some people "neutral" is "hates my guts" or something, or some people are stereotypically tourists in such a way that it'd piss people off in their hometown.
  - mcculley 3y ago
    I have similarly not had the problems others describe. I suspect that many people need a guide or lesson on how to be good tourist/guest. Too many act entitled as tourists. I push back at home on what I perceive as poor service or behavior from civil servants. Abroad, I try to not expect that everything is done as in my home culture. Just having the right attitude makes others less unfriendly.
  - sdsd 3y ago
    >don't go to Y they don't like Americans As an American, this has been my experience with French people. Everyone tells me how rude they are, and how they dislike Americans. Meanwhile, I've met a ton of French people and they have all been absolutely wonderful, polite, and totally friendly. Actually, I brought this up the first time I met two Frenchmen when I was 19 in NYC. They were tourists and I was surprised and mentioned that I was under the impression that French people disliked Americans, and they said "No, we love them! Just maybe in Paris, you will not like it, but the rest of France is much better!" Idk what to take from that, but the point is, French people are great ime.
    - 7thaccount 3y ago
      I've heard many places still remember (at least generational memory) of America liberating France from the Nazis.

JJMcJ 3y ago

Also the Hawaiians never got any kind of tribal status relative to the United States, so they have no autonomous institutions. Hawaiians in the ethnic sense. I believe in Hawaii itself it's customary to only call someone Hawaiian if they have that ethnic background.

JJMcJ 3y ago
> only call someone Hawaiian Example in recent days, President Biden referred to "residents of Hawaii" as getting assistance, rather than "Hawaiians".

munificent 3y ago

> and are dryer than expected That's not from colonization or vegetation clearing. The Hawaiian islands are all produced by volcanos. Especially for the younger islands to the east, that means they are shaped like very tall cones. With prevailing winds from the east, the western side of the islands are in the rain shadow of the mountains and are much drier than the eastern sides. The effect is very pronounced and visible on satellite photos of the big island. The west side is dry and desert-like, and the east side is a lush tropical jungle. The western sides of these islands would be deserts even if no human ever set foot on them.

hparadiz 3y ago

I lived near Lahaina for a year. Where the fires are going on now. That part of the island is just a natural desert because it is on the leeward side of the prevailing winds. It's a natural tinder box. The land directly adjacent to Lahaina is mostly dry grass at this time of the year. It has not been cleared. The actual farms are much greener than what is naturally there. > But it was apparent that large swaths of native vegetation were cleared for colonization Complete nonsense. Native Hawaiians were farming that land for centuries before white people showed up. People will visit Maui then make up a bunch of stuff about it without doing any actual research. Monkeypod isn't even native to Hawaii.

duhaime 3y ago
Monkeypods are in fact considered invasive by some, though they are one of the more forgivable invasive species: https://plantpono.org/pono-plants/samanea-saman/ https://plantpono.org/pono-plants/samanea-saman/
hijp 3y ago
He's not wrong. You can't compare the ahupua'a system with the large scale industrial monoculture plantations of the 1800s-and onward. https://imgur.com/OCirGip https://imgur.com/OCirGip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_plantations_in_Hawaii#Environmental_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_plantations_in_Hawaii#En...
- hparadiz 3y ago
  The area on fire is a magnitude larger than all the land the sugar plantations ever took up. There was never any development of that land. Not today. Not ever. It's been designated a natural preserve much like 99.9% of all the jungle areas.
  - hijp 3y ago
    That's completely inaccurate. 2,000 acres burned in the maui fire. In contrast, Alexander and Baldwin sold 41,000 acres of sugar plantation land in 2018. Here's a map of the Maui fires (red dots) overlayed on sugar lands. https://imgur.com/CysWreb https://imgur.com/CysWreb, https://health.hawaii.gov/epo/egis/sugarcane/ https://health.hawaii.gov/epo/egis/sugarcane/ From NYT: “The fire problem,” he added, “is mostly attributable to the vast extents of nonnative grasslands left unmanaged by large landowners.” That shift away from plantations allowed tropical grasslands to grow untended, which built up the fuels needed for big wildfires to spread. Mr. Trauernicht, a specialist in wildland fire science and management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, refers to a “grass-fire” cycle. This happens when the heavy rains that fall across the islands cause the grasses to grow. Then the dry season arrives, and the grasses burn. “The biomass out there is off the charts,” Mr. Trauernicht said in a 2021 interview. There are ways that the authorities can limit this destructive cycle, he said. They include building firebreaks, introducing vegetation that is more resistant to fire and allowing livestock to keep grasses at a manageable level. For years, Mr. Trauernicht and other experts have been calling for such moves to mitigate Hawaii’s wildfire risks." And: "I talked to Clay Trauernicht, one of Hawaii’s top wildfire experts. His assessment: The plantations of sugarcane and pineapple that dominated the state's economy during much of the 19th and 20th centuries are mostly gone. Their disappearance, and Hawaii's heavy rains, allowed tropical grasslands to grow rapidly, replacing them. But then the dry season comes, and the grasses burn, causing destruction like we’re seeing on Maui.

legitster 3y ago

> But it was apparent that large swaths of native vegetation were cleared for colonization. Even before settlers, the land on Maui wasn't just unkempt wilderness. They had enormous Taro and fish farms. They also thinned out forests regularly. Like most agricultural societies, they actively managed their landscape. But part of the issue (besides global warming) is that nearly all of the land is going derelict for the first time. These areas have been under active management for thousands of years up until 40 years ago. And free-falling Ag revenue means that there is less money to manage it today - either subsidize new agriculture or even properly re-wild it. It would be easy enough to try to go back to pre-plantation agriculture, but Native Hawaiians today are no more interested to take up subsistence Taro farming than we would be. So there is not much of a solution either than grin and increase tourism, or get more federal subsidies and repeal the Jones Act.

trafficante 3y ago
> repeal the Jones Act Man do I wish more attention was given to this matter. Virtually all the national security arguments in favor of the Jones Act are either moot or straight up farcical in Current Year. It’s particularly strange when you consider this should be one of those unicorn “good” bipartisan issues with multiple reasons for right/left wing people to hop on board. Environmentalism, anti-racist (ie: Puerto Rico), huge boost to many local economies (on both the coasts and Midwest), etc. Maybe the trucking industry/unions are heavily lobbying against a repeal? It’s difficult to come up with a reasonable explanation for why Jones Act bills keep dying before they get a vote.
- legitster 3y ago
  It boggles my mind. Someone was telling me that the Mississippi River is only using about 1/10th of its potential freight capacity when compared to equivalent European waterways or even the shipping capacity the Army Corp of Engineers maintains. For all of the attention billionaires get, I think it's a good reminder of how politics are still local. The Koch brothers dumped billions of dollars to try to reform prison sentencing and oppose the ACA and got nowhere with either. Meanwhile, a small handful of multi-generational shipping magnates in the US have had a stranglehold on the economy with the support of congress for over 100 years.