WCPA-Marine/WWF MPA Management Effectiveness Initiative
Pilot site profiles


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Pilot Sites

The Working Draft Guidebook on evaluating effectiveness in MPAs, produced by the WCPA-Marine/WWF MPA Management Effectiveness Initiative, provides MPA managers and practitioners with tools to develop assessments and measure indicators that are most relevant to their site. In order to ensure that the tool is feasible, accurate, and easy to use it is important to field test the guidebook and indicators. There are 21 pilot project sites, and having a range of pilot projects with varying situations and challenges will provide critical results for revising and improving the guidebook and ensuring that it is applicable to a wide range of conditions. The pilot projects will also validate the indicators in a variety of MPAs. The results of the pilot projects will determine the flexibility and adaptation of indicators to different cases. View summary of pilot project information (pdf, 1 page, 68K).
world map with sites
World map of pilot project sites in alphabetical order. Click on the left menu to view a profile of each site. (Note: there are two sites at numbers 1, 4, 5 and 14).
1. Achang Reef Flat Preserve & Piti Bomb Holes Preserve (Guam); 2. Banc D'Arguin National Park (Mauritania); 3. Banco Chinchorro Biosphere Reserve (Mexico); 4. Bird Island Marine Sanctuary & Sasanhaya Fish Reserve (CNMI); 5. Bunaken National Park & Sebesi Island Marine Sanctuary (Indonesia); 6. Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (U.S.A.); 7. Far Eastern Federal Marine Reserve (Russia); 8. Galapagos Islands Marine Reserve (Ecuador) 9. Hol Chan Marine Reserve (Belize); 10. Lenger Island Marine Protected Area (Micronesia); 11. Loreto Bay National Park (Mexico);12. Mafia Island Marine Park (Tanzania); 13. Miramare Marine Protected Area (Italy); 14. Ngemelis & Ngerumekaol (Ebiil), (Palau); 15. Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve (Mexico); 16. Tubbataha Reef National Marine Park (Philippines); and 17. Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta Biosphere Reserve (Mexico).

Overview

Pilot projects are essential because they allow us to test the indictors, guidelines and resulting methodology to assure their usefulness in as broad a spectrum of circumstances as possible. The pilot projects will address diverse issues, and involve different interest and stakeholders related to the many possible MPA objectives.

Criteria for site selection

Sites were selected considering geographic and regional representation, type of marine ecosystem, type of protection system, size of the protected area, and years of management experience.

Other criteria taken into account in selecting sites are used to make the exercise more feasible and effective. Some important characteristics of the site include:

  • Interest of site manager(s) to undertake management effectiveness assessment, including the adoption and monitoring of the management strategies resulting from the assessment.
  • Capacity to conduct management effectiveness assessment.
  • Cost of the assessment and physical accessibility are not prohibitive
  • Expedite communication facilities between the site and project managers
  • Availability of qualified individuals to be trained (preferably in English)
  • Adequate and recognizable institutional framework and authorities administering the site.

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