Background
The growing number and increasing complexity of ongoing marine protected areas (MPA) planning processes in the U.S. pose serious challenges to anyone attempting to effectively track and engage in these important resource conservation decisions. Each planning process has its own unique timeline of meetings, review documents, and other official events. These processes are crucial to the ultimate decisions made by the various MPA managing agencies. In response to requests from a variety of stakeholders for a more transparent way to stay informed, the National Marine Protected Areas Center would like to provide web-based "one-stop-shopping," where members of the public can find information about ongoing federal and state MPA planning processes in the U.S.

Status of the Regional Information Centers
A pilot online information center, www.PacificMPA.org, lists ongoing federal, state, and tribal MPA planning processes on the Pacific Coast (California, Oregon, and Washington). It was established in 2002 with the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea.

Currently, the MPA Center is developing a web-based information center for MPA planning processes in the New England region (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and the Pacific Islands region (Hawaii, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Guam).

The MPA Center is also developing five other regional information centers for the following U.S. regions:

• Caribbean
• Great Lakes
• Gulf of Mexico
• Mid Atlantic
• South Atlantic

For More Information, Contact:
Amy Nickens,
National Marine Protected Areas Center
1305 East-West Highway, #12320
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 713-3100, ext. 237
Fax: (301) 713-3110
Amy.Nickens@noaa.gov

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