This section is intended to help coral reef MPA planners and managers select resilient coral communities for protection and determine protected area zones and boundaries.

• Many MPAs are designed using a site conservation planning approach that leads through problem identification to threat abatement. Specific, often obvious, impacts on the conservation targets are identified. Then, management actions are designed to resolve these at the MPA site.

For example, coral breakage might be the consequence of anchors (the cause) associated with the tourism industry (the source).

The remedial management measures might call for placement of moorings, reef closures to facilitate recovery, and a range of regulations and awareness materials to support these actions.

• Site conservation planning is well designed for localized threat abatement and may even help to anticipate some potential stresses linked to distant sources; for example, sedimentation from a proposed development may be linked to deforestation in a watershed.

• However, site conservation planning by definition is linked to a specific site. There are targets at the site, stresses at the site, sources linked to those stresses at the site, and management strategies for their control or abatement.

• Global, largely unmanageable stresses do not fit easily into this approach and are better addressed through strategies for mitigation.

In the face of global change, conservation action should maintain primary emphasis on threat abatement. But MPA practitioners should also add a new dimension: management to enhance resilience in the face of emerging threats. Mass bleaching is one such danger to coral reefs worldwide that demands immediate action.