National Geographic ADVENTURE

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Molokai Wins Development Fight, But At High Cost

Text and photos by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The hand-painted signs are posted on trees, mail boxes, and front porches all across Molokai. “No to La’au Point”, they say, or simply, “No”. Living’s not so easy on the Friendly Isle, where jobs are scarce for the 7,500 residents, as I found out when the magazine sent me there last November to shoot a cover. But the people cling to their way of life, resisting the tourist pox of other islands, and have doggedly fought the proposed La’au development on the pristine southwest corner of the island.

Now the developer has fought back: The Singapore-based landowner closed its beautiful lodge at Molokai Ranch and fired all 120 employees.

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Environment: Putting Greenbacks Where the Green Is

Good news for the good guys: $60,000 is up for grabs for two environmentally focused nonprofits.

As of today, March 15, Redwood Creek Wines, a Modesto, California-based vineyard, is accepting submissions from U.S. nonprofits with grand plans—but meager means—for their Greater Outdoors Project, an initiatve aimed to “help maintain or improve America’s wide-open spaces.”

The winning organization will get a $50,000 grant; the runner-up $10,000. In addition to the cash prize, the top nonprofit will land a national advertising campaign set to run in outdoors magazines—including ADVENTURE—in December.

Applications and guidelines are posted online today through May 15. After that, a panel of judges—including our 2007 Adventurer of the Year, long-distance hiker Andrew Skurka—will review the submissions.

But the public gets the final say: From June 15 through July 31, you can head to Redwood Creek’s site to check out the judges’ top five picks, then vote for your own favorite. The winning projects will be announced at the beginning of August, so stay tuned.

--Andrea Minarcek