The Great Mahele How It Affected Land Use
Recreation
During the reign if king Kamehameha the first land was given to the people through the king. The chiefs would oversee the land and the people would use it. The people would follow a system called the Kapu, this regulated what people could fish, farm and use. The Kapu continued all the way until the death of King Kamehameha the second. During the reign of king Kamehameha the third is when the Kuleana Act, otherwise known as the Great Mahele (land division) was issued. The act was broken up into three parts. Part one allowed the king to keep a part of land called the crown lands. Second the Government lands were given to the chiefs and the people. The third act of the Mahele was allowed the enabled the land commission to award small areas of land. This act greatly affected the Hawaiians. Many of the natives lost their land to foreigners, who used the land for many things; one of those uses was recreation.
Recreation is a big part of Hawaii today. There are two types of recreation land and ocean recreation. Recreation includes land being used for sports, parks, and even out in the ocean. Just in Hawaii alone there are 26 state parks, 286 county parks and almost the same amount of community centers. There are many issues that revolve around recreation. One of the big issues is the killing of the coral reefs due to the snorkeling or over swimming. When people snorkel or go swimming in coral reefs they step on and kill the coral reefs. Many reefs in Hawaii are experiencing a big decrease the most at 75%.
People are also over fishing another type of recreation. Fishing regulations are limits to which fishers and divers can catch the fish. The parrot fish can only be caught at 12 inches, but they are not able to reproduce until they are 13 inches or 1 year of life. Now that they are endangered and are important to the coral reefs the government is thinking of changing it to 14 inches. The parrot fish is used to clean algae off of the coral.
In my opinion I think the Mahele started off as a good thing. It was a time for change and for Hawaii to move forward. It brought different ideas to Hawaii, such as the production of sugar cane. With the production of sugar cane brought different ethnicities. It also bought the concept of whaling and fishing as a business. But what started off as a good thing started to go bad when we overused it and kicked the Hawaiians off of their land.
If the Great Mahele had not been issued the reefs would probably not be dying. The Kapu would have regulated the use of fishing and swimming in the waters. Now with the Mahele issued Land is used for different things.
