Welcome to Maha`ulepu, Kaua`i, one of the most spectacular and cherished undeveloped coastal areas in the Hawaiian Islands.

Maha`ulepu is a heritage landscape. Revealing 5 million years of continuous history, it is a living museum - a research site and habitat for rare and endangered plants and animals. Maha`ulepu is sacred and legendary to Native Hawaiians, many of whom are connected to this area by ancestral ties and by continuing cultural uses.

As the last accessible undeveloped coastline on the south shore of Kaua`i, Maha`ulepu is a quiet retreat, a place to get away from the crowds at popular resort beaches. Residents and their families come to relax, picnic, hike, fish, dive, surf and windsurf and to observe the sea life along the coast. Visitors say that the area - pristine, awesome and secluded - is what they hoped to find in Hawai`i.

But Maha`ulepu is threatened by development. Over the past thirty years, the landowner, Grove Farm Company, has actively planned hotels, golf courses, second homes and shopping facilities here. Grove Farm regards the area as unsurpassed for resort development. Meanwhile, citizens have opposed past proposals, and 5000 more visitor and residential units have already received partial approvals for the Koloa region in which Maha`ulepu is located.

The parks and preserves of the future, legacies of foresight, must be established now through innovative and sound private and public collaboration. Because of everything which can be seen, learned and felt here, Maha`ulepu must be preserved.

Please, use this site to visit Maha`ulepu and learn what's at stake. Join our community-based effort to keep Maha`ulepu a natural place for future generations. Thank you.

Malama Maha`ulepu

The Name Malama Maha`ulepu, Its Meaning and an Apology

Malama Maha`ulepu reformed in 2000, taking the name of a previous activist group.

Malama means to take care of, attend, care for, preserve, protect, beware, save, maintain. (Mary Kawena Pukui, Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary, 1986, University of Hawai`i Press.) Maha`ulepu likely has several meanings but the name is commonly thought to express the idea of all falling together in reference to the many ancestral burials and legendary battles in the area.

Since many people do not have the software to write and read Hawaiian language fonts, we have chosen, for now, to forego use of the kahako, the Hawaiian language macron. The macron should be placed over the first a in malama and over both a's and the final u in Maha`ulepu. We humbly apologize to those students, teachers and speakers of the beautiful native language of Hawai`i.