Help Protect Coral Reefs of the Tropics Help us rescue the coral reefs of the tropics.   With your help, we can protect the world’s beautiful seascapes, have a lasting impact on conservation and Rescue the Reef! Principles of Resilient MPA Networks Effective management is essential to keeping reefs vibrant and healthy. Reducing threats is the foundation for successful conservation and the core of our resilience-based strategies. Critical areas may provide essential sources of larvae to aid in the replenishment and recovery of damaged reefs. These areas also include high-priority conservation targets, such as fish spawning aggregations and nursery habitats. Connectivity among reef habitats ensures the replenishment of coral communities and fish stocks from nearby healthy reefs and may enhance recovery of damaged reefs. Representation, replication and risk-spreading can help increase the likelihood of reef survival. By ensuring that resilient species and habitats are well-represented and replicated throughout MPA networks, coral reef managers can decrease the risk of catastrophic events, such as bleaching, from destroying entire reef ecosystems. Resilience Resources Reef Resilience Toolkit : A toolkit for marine resource managers that includes strategies and methods to address coral bleaching and conserve reef fish spawning aggregations. Visit www.reefresilience.org Training workshops: The Conservancy has conducted coral reef protection training in more than 30 countries in all of the major coral reef regions of the world, providing hands-on activities to help practitioners build resilience into their management activities. IUCN Reports Establishing Resilient Marine Protected Area Networks - Making It Happen. Managing Mangroves for Resilience to Climate Change. (PDF, 1.8 MB) Coral Reefs Resilience and Resistant to Bleaching (PDF, 1.9 MB) Learn More Fact Sheet: Ensuring Coral Reef Survival (PDF, 242 KB) Reef Managers Guide to Coral Bleaching

The Nature Conservancy works with partners around the world to create marine protected area (MPA) networks. As one of a suite of effective management tools, MPA networks protect and restore the most resilient examples of healthy ocean and coastal habitats in ways that benefit marine life, local communities and economies.

Adapting to a Changing Planet

The demands of a growing population and a changing climate are damaging marine ecosystems:

• Overfishing and destructive fishing practices are threatening important resources, fishing livelihoods and the economic viability of coastal communities.
• The growing impacts of global climate change—higher water temperatures, rising sea levels and escalating ocean acidity—are dramatically increasing conservation challenges.

Ensuring Coral Reef Survival

An increase in ocean temperatures of just a few degrees can destroy huge areas of coral reefs through bleaching – a stress response that causes a coral to lose its colorful and protective colony of nutrient-gathering algae.

But for every reef that suffers from bleaching, certain coral communities—or critical areas—survive.

We are working to identify these critical areas where fish, corals and other tropical marine life resist bleaching and damage, as well as the factors that contribute to their resilience. By creating networks of protected areas, we hope to help nearby degraded marine habitats recover and rebuild. 

Advancing Marine Policy

The Conservancy mobilizes government action around the world to shape marine policies that support resilient MPA networks. Decisions by international forums, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, provide an important framework of commitments and action steps to guide the Conservancy’s work to create and expand MPA networks.

We are active in supporting a variety of international policy initiatives to protect important marine habitat:

• Micronesia Challenge—We are working with partners and playing a leading role in supporting a commitment by Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the U.S. territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands to effectively conserve 30% of their coastal and ocean areas and 20% of their forests by 2020.
• Learn how the United Nations, The Nature Conservancy and others are helping to fund efforts to create island MPAs. 
• Look at some of the many projects The Nature Conservancy is doing to protect and restore island ecosystems of all kinds.

Where We Work to Build Resilience

• Florida Keys
• Papua New Guinea
• Republic of Palau
• MesoAmerican Reef
• Coral Triangle
• Bahamas