Last Saturday, when the rest of Kaua'i was on the road to Lihu'e to finish Christmas shopping or in the park winding shiny garland around Uncle Skippy's truck for the Waimea town Christmas parade, more than two dozen people spent the day holding signs in Koloa to save monkeypod trees.

What was notable was the diversity of the protesters. When people jumped into Nawiliwili Harbor to protest the arrival of the Superferry earlier this year, they were brushed off by some as "newcomers" mixed with a few "local radicals."

The Koloa tree protesters included longtime Koloa residents, more recent Koloa residents and, interestingly, maybe ironically, a number of tourists who want to make sure Koloa doesn't lose its old plantation-town style.

It's a bit late for that.

Meanwhile, just down the road, two huge developments are going forward that haven't caused much controversy except for billowing dust. The Kukuiula luxury home development will have 123 homes starting at $1.7 million. The Koloa Landing project will turn the coastline near Spouting Horn into an upscale resort with units starting at $900,000.

The Koloa monkeypods, expansive sentinels that have been there since the little plantation town really was a little plantation town, are in jeopardy from a planned shopping center that will go up in the buffalo grass below the Koloa post office. It will include, naturally, upscale boutiques and office space catering to the well-heeled people who can afford to buy units at Koloa Landing and Kukuiula or stay at the nearby Hyatt Po'ipu. Maybe there will be an art gallery there that sells paintings of the former monkeypod trees so tourists can see where they used to be and admire how beautiful they once were.

Perhaps this signals a new niche in marketing Hawai'i to visitors: protest-tourism. Come to Hawai'i, wave a sign, feel like you're doing something important for this beautiful place. Eco-tourism, which means taking hordes of people tromping through "unspoiled" areas, isn't so eco-friendly. Medical tourism never really got off the ground, as evidenced by the recent announcement that the Hilton medi-spa Holistica can't make a go of it. Cultural tourism gets hopelessly off-track with "smoke with aloha" campaigns and fake-shaman rituals foisted on unsuspecting outsiders. Protest tourism can give the tourists that feeling of significance. They can point to snapshots of their trip and tell their friends, "See that? I tried to save it!"

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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