This winter’s candlelight vigils and banner-waving protesters are gone, their legal challenges exhausted. Soon, bulldozers could roll past Koloa’s wooden sidewalks, clucking chickens and stop sign plastered with a “Die Developers Die” bumper sticker, ready to transform a ragtag grove of monkeypod trees into a shopping center.

But here in Hawaii’s oldest sugar plantation town, little more than a coconut’s throw from the burgeoning tourist resort of Poipu, the stymiedeffort to preserve what local shopkeeper Lee Jacobson Rowen calls “the soul of Koloa” is a symbol of a much bigger fight for Kauai’s identity — and future.

Asks a recent editorial in the local paper, The Garden Island: “How does an island like Kauai, with so much to offer the world and so much that can be taken away from residents, come to terms with itself?”

The paper continues: “For those who live here, the rewards are obvious. The negatives are also evident: traffic, overrun areas that were once secret or sacred, expansions of the tourism infrastructure. And though that infrastructure benefits residents in many ways, it also fosters the ‘us and them’ mentality. Resentment builds (and) visitors become the target.”

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(Source: Laura Bly, USA Today)