Iconic Maui Beach Is Disappearing One Palm Tree At A Time

We were walking one of Maui’s most familiar beaches recently, and a longtime favorite of ours, when the absence became obvious, not because anything dramatic was happening at that moment, but because something defining was simply gone. Only after standing there for a few minutes did it fully register that Baldwin Beach Park no longer looked the way it always had.

Palm trunks with no healthy fronds still stood close to the ocean, some already surrounded by sand that looked unstable even at low tide. In many cases, the frond section was either gone entirely or visibly dead. It made the ocean seem closer than it used to, not in any sudden way, but close enough that it was easy to see why those trees might not be coming back to this spot.

In the past week alone, eighteen coconut palm trees were removed here. At Baldwin, that is not a small adjustment, because those palms shaped how the shoreline has long appeared and how the beach is photographed from nearly every common angle.

The county says the ocean forced its hand. But many residents say that the explanation skips over years of poor care, and being there in person did not feel like a clean either-or choice between those two stories.

We spoke with lifeguards while we were there, and they were candid but unsure of the cause. They said it could be encroaching seawater, a lack of proper care, palm beetles, or something else entirely, and that none of it felt settled from their vantage point.

Why Maui County says the trees were doomed.

According to Maui County, the coconut trees removed were already in decline and could not be saved. That part was hard to miss in person. They were among roughly 70 palms historically lining the Baldwin shoreline, and these 18 sat closest to the water, where repeated submersion during high tides and flooding allowed saltwater to seep into their root systems over time.

County arborist Timothy Griffith explained the issue bluntly, saying, “If these trees had died due to over-trimming, we would be seeing similar losses across the island.” He said coconut trees can tolerate some salt exposure, but they are not resistant to repeated flooding that leaves roots sitting in saltwater. Once that threshold is crossed, decline may be slow, but recovery is unlikely.

Griffith also addressed claims that trimming practices were responsible for the losses by pointing to the broader system the county manages. He said Maui County maintains more than 30,000 trees across the island, including about 1,600 coconut and palm trees, and that they are pruned twice a year in accordance with industry standards. If trimming were the cause, he said, similar failures would be showing up well beyond Baldwin rather than being concentrated along the shoreline.

Parks and Recreation Director Patrick McCall said the county plans to add trees in the future and will continue dune restoration work at Baldwin Beach Park. He also pointed to the park’s master plan, which already relocated infrastructure inland, including the pavilion that once stood much closer to the shoreline and was removed earlier because of erosion.

The Maui shoreline has been moving for a long time.

This did not begin recently, even if the changes feel sudden to us now. A county vulnerability and adaptation study cited shoreline retreat of roughly a quarter mile over the past century in this area, and the distance becomes clearer when you look at where the beach’s fixed features used to sit compared with where the water actually reaches today.

High tides now push into areas that once stayed dry, and sand that previously protected root systems no longer holds in place the same way it once did. Trees planted decades ago were never meant to sit with their roots soaked by saltwater again and again, especially without consistent dune buildup in front of them, which may well be why the trees closest to the water failed first.

Why locals are not buying the explanation.

Local reaction has been blunt and skeptical. Commenters familiar with Baldwin and other Maui parks say they have watched palms decline for years and do not believe saltwater intrusion explains everything they have seen there.

Many point to aggressive and frequent trimming that leaves palms tall, exposed, and stressed, while others say over-pruning during drought conditions weakens trees and makes them vulnerable to disease. One commenter described how park trees are handled as treating them like liabilities rather than features worth protecting.

Several people have referenced a longtime local caretaker often called the “coconut man,” who once treated and maintained coconut trees around the island. Others raised blight or disease as possibly contributing to the problem and argued that not every dying palm should be written off as a casualty, the way the county depicted.

County officials, however, have rejected those claims and say that the remaining 50 coconut trees farther inland at Baldwin are healthy and protected. The separation between trees that failed and those that remain nearby them closely follows how often the ocean reaches them.

What beach visitors will notice now.

Baldwin Beach still feels like Baldwin in the broad sense. The sand remains wide, the wind perennially cuts across the park, and the parking is still sometimes a challenge, the way this North Shore beach has long been.

The palms once framed the beautiful beach and graced the view from the parking area, and without them, the shoreline feels exposed and less attractive. The ocean’s advance is harder to ignore entirely, and longtime visitors will notice the change immediately as we did. First-time visitors may not realize what is missing. The photos they take now will not be the same as the images that drew them there in the first place.

Retreat is already underway here.

What sets Baldwin apart from many other Maui beaches is that the problems here are no longer theoretical. The pavilion there was removed earlier due to erosion, and the park’s master plan calls for future infrastructure to be placed farther inland rather than along the old shoreline. New trees are also planned.

Seeing it up close.

We were just there photographing what remains and what is already gone, and the scale of the change is clearer in person than in the photos. It is easy to see why the county says these trees were not coming back, and it is just as easy to understand why people feel something important slipped too far before any action was taken. Baldwin Beach Park is certainly not disappearing overnight, but it is changing in ways that are no longer subtle, and the palms gone missing are unlikely to be the last visible sign of that shift.

Do you see this as unavoidable shoreline retreat finally catching up at Baldwin, or as a loss that better care and earlier intervention might have slowed before the trees were gone?

Photo Credit: Beat of Hawaii at Baldwin Beach, Maui.