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SOURCE: Adapted from Roberts et al, in review b.

successful implementation (see Chapter 4), but a balance between social concerns and biological function must be achieved. What methods are available for selecting functional reserves that meet these social and ecological criteria?

Kelleher (1999), building on previous work of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN, now the World Conservation Union), provided broad guidelines for selecting MPA sites, drawn from experience in the selection of terrestrial protected areas. He identified several classes of related criteria that bear on choice of a site: biogeographic and ecological criteria; naturalness; economic, social, and scientific importance; international or national significance; practicality or feasibility; and duality or replication. However, these guidelines neither offer guidance on how to prioritize these criteria nor provide advice on how to rank candidate sites according to each criterion.

This approach has been elaborated in recent papers (e.g., Salm and Price, 1995; Nilsson, 1998; Agardy, 1997). A summary of these criteria is provided in Table 6-1. All of these efforts focus on the problem of selecting individual marine reserves, but there is a growing awareness that this piecemeal approach to reserve establishment ultimately may fail to protect species and functional ecosystems. The implication derived from the broad dispersal capabilities and