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The Marine Protected Area (MPA) Program Master Plan is meant to be a simple and easy to follow step-by-step roadmap to assist the American Samoa Government (ASG), Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources' MPA Program in meeting the goal to ensure protection of unique, various and diverse coral reef habitat and spawning stocks. This will also assist efforts to meet the Governor's mandate of protecting 20% of American Samoa's coral reefs by declaring no-take MPAs. The MPA Program Master Plan will provide new Program Leaders with a description of the activities that the MPA Program staff has been involved with, along with a vision of what is to come, and a foundation upon which to move forward. This structured guide will allow MPA Program Leaders to track their progress towards creating no-take MPAs. It is hoped that this plan will help to minimize the loss of institutional memory due to high staff turnover. The Master Plan will help the local staff to understand what activities the MPA Program plans to conduct. By having a plan, the MPA Program can be more transparent with the public by announcing opportunities for the public to be involved in implementing no-take MPAs. This long-term plan will help to guide the writing of future grant proposals and can assist the coordination of activities with other natural resource agencies and entities. This Master Plan is written with the assumption that the MPA Program staff and budget will remain at about the same level throughout implementation (1 program leader and 2- 3 staff, plus volunteers). If opportunities arise to increase staff and funding, the timeline may change for activities. Also, additional activities may be undertaken.

The objectives of the survey were to: (1) identify plant species presently causing problems to natural and semi-natural ecosystems; (2) identify species that, even though they are not presently a major problem, could spread more widely or are known to be problem species elsewhere; (3) confirm the absence of species that are a problem elsewhere and, if introduced to Samoa, could be a threat there; and (4) make appropriate recommendations.

This is a continuation of the survey of islands in Micronesia and American Samoa for invasive plant species requested by the Pacific Islands Committee, Council of Western State Foresters. A survey of selected Micronesian islands was conducted in 1998 and was discussed in a previous report2. This report is based on perceptions gained from a trip to American Samoa from 16 to 23 July 1999, including the islands of Tutuila, Ofu, Olosega and Ta'u. The objectives were three-fold: (1) To identify plant species on the islands that are presently causing problems to natural and semi-natural ecosystems; (2) to identify species that, even though they are not presently a major problem, could spread more widely or spread to other islands where they are not present, potentially causing problems; and (3) to confirm the absence of species that are a problem elsewhere and, if introduced to American Samoa, could be a threat there.