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on the conservation targets and goals, the projected climate change impacts, the location of the project, the socio- economic environment and many other local factors. There have been numerous attempts to list and categorize general categories of adapta- tion actions derived from the principles of resistance, resilience and facilitation strategies (Mawdsley et al. 2009). Rather than discussing all of these attempts here, below is a listing of some of the more prominent distinctions adapted from several sources (Heller and Zavaleta 2009, Hodgson et al. 2009, Mawdsley et al. 2009, Thecharides et al. 2009). One strategy for managing target species, habitats and ecosystems under climate change is to imple- ment actions so that these targets are better able to resist the impacts of climate change (Millar et al. 2007). To prevent change, managers must build up species' and ecosystem defenses against the direct and indirect effects of rapid climate changes. For example, in forest systems, resistance strategies might involve actions such as preventing extreme forest fires by creating fuel breaks around high value resources or intensive removal of invasive species and inter- vention to block future invasions. These types of actions are likely to "require intensive intervention, accelerating efforts and investments over time, and a recognition that eventually these efforts may fail as conditions change cumulatively (Millar et al. 2007)." These types of actions may best be applied in the short -term and to resources of high value; systems with low sensitivity to climate change may respond best to resistance treatments (Millar et al. 2007). Maintaining resilient ecological communities and allowing species to move in response to climate change will require the strategic expansion of a connected network of conservation areas and management of these lands for climate change (Hannah et al. 2007). Large conservation areas tend to contain more species and tend to encompass greater levels of environmen- tal heterogeneity (diversity of landscape features, habitats and resources) than small areas. Hetero- geneity generally promotes higher levels of species richness and endemism, and provides opportuni- ties for populations to survive different extremes by shifting among different habitat types, soils, aspects, or elevations within the larger landscape (Hodgson et al. 2009). While simply expanding the conser- vation footprint to create large conservation areas is essential, strategically protecting lands that add to the representation and redundancy of conservation targets will also be important. Conservation areas should represent the biological features or targets of interest and the range of environmental conditions under which they occur, and should provide redun- dancy so that targets are represented multiple times and are therefore less prone to extinction caused by extreme events. Protecting land along ecological gradients ( altitudinal, latitudinal, etc) will also be an important strategy to help species shift their ranges and move in response to climate change and adding protected areas on the edges of species current distri- butions may held species move and peripheral popu- lations become increasingly important with climate change (Hannah et al. 2007). As the climate changes, strategic decisions about where to spend limited conservation dollars to protect habitat will be of critical importance. One action may be to identify and protect conservation areas that include climate refugia, or areas that may be less affected by climate change than other areas (e.g. due to local currents, topography, or geograph- ic location) (Mawdsley et al. 2009). For example, mountainous regions may provide refugia because they are highly heterogeneous and contain a wide range of micro - climates within the sites. Potential refugia can be located using the paleological records to identify sites where refugial populations persist- ed during historic periods of rapid climate change (Mawdsley et al. 2009). These locations may serve as sites for long -term retention of species, or for intro- duction of sensitive species from other locations.