The Convention on Biological Diversity calls E7080 chemical structure for “effective conservation” of 10 percent of the world’s marine and coastal ecological resources (Convention on Biological Diversity, 1999). Yet, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources reports that just 1.2 percent of global oceans now benefit from some form of protected status, mostly near shore, as MPAs total 4.1 percent within Exclusive Economic Zones (Toropova et al., 2010). Definitions of protected

areas, and levels of effective protection, vary among nations and between the U.S. federal and California government. The current national inventory (Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, 2011) identifies 1681 MPAs in the U.S., with 98% of the total area included

in MPAs under federal jurisdiction and only 3% of the total area in “no take” MPAs. Creation of extensive MPAs by sub-national governments appears to be globally rare and California is the first state in the U.S. to create a scientifically-based, coherent network of MPAs in state waters, including many “no-take” MPAs. While enacting legislation to authorize Nutlin-3a research buy a new program, such as redesigning and adaptively managing a network of MPAs, is a difficult and significant task, it is often harder to actually implement such legislation, as impacts on specific places and users intensifies conflicts ( Layzer, 2008). This paper provides an overview of California’s effort to create a statewide network of MPAs between 2004 and 2011 based on the planning work of the Thymidylate synthase Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (Initiative), a public–private partnership created to help the state implement the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) enacted in19992 which had six unranked goals (Table 1). The Initiative was launched following two prior unsuccessful efforts to implement the MLPA (Gleason et al., 2010; Weible, 2008). Importantly, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) creating the Initiative anticipated

dividing the statewide effort into multiple regional planning processes for geographically defined study regions and MPA planning has been completed in four (Fig. 1). The MOU also identified several volunteer bodies to help carry out the Initiative’s charge which were critical for successful implementation of the MLPA. The volunteer bodies included a Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF), a Master Plan Science Advisory Team (SAT), and a Regional Stakeholder Group (RSG) for each region of the state, as well as a Statewide Interests Group (SIG) to provide input throughout the process. Only the SAT has statute-based roles; the others existed only on the basis of MOUs. Individuals involved in these volunteer bodies donated hundreds of hours of their time to participate in the planning process (Gleason et al., 2013). Over seven years, $19.5 million from private charitable foundations and approximately $18.