Excerpt from General Management Plan/Development Concept Plans, and Environmental Assessment, June 1989: Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona How should we use this ancient land that is now Petrified Forest National Park? This plan establishes three primary management goals: The land and resources should be protected, retaining their value for future generations. Visitors should be given a wide range of sensory and perceptual opportunities to experience the park's land and its scenic, paleontological, cultural, and ecological resources, and to understand them in the broad context of Earth's history. Scientific inquiry into the Triassic period of Earth's history should be encouraged and supported. There is a potential for conflict among these goals, in that visitor use and research inevitably result in some disturbance of the land and its resources and also may interfere with one another. But there is also potential for great harmony. Excavation, documentation, and placement in a museum is often the only way to preserve fossils that are eroding out of their protective overburden. Thus, both the goals of protection and scientific inquiry are served by these activities. In the same way, providing opportunities for people to walk into the landscape, to discover a special piece of petrified wood or a fossilized bone, to hold it in their hands, and to understand its history may enhance people's appreciation of what these objects represent, and strengthen their sense of connection with the Earth. In the long term people's sense of being a part of the Earth may be the only thing that can ultimately protect it. While some preservation issues, like air and water quality, require complex considerations and actions to improve, a simple positive and symbolic commitment can be made by visitors to Petrified Forest by choosing to leave the park exactly as they found it, foregoing the temptation to keep small pieces of souvenir petrified wood. Thus, both the goals of protection and a quality visitor experience are served by bringing resources and people together. Scientific inquiry and visitor use can also be complementary goals. Many people are fascinated by the opportunity to watch researchers at work, and seeing where a fossil skeleton came out of the ground and how it was prepared for exhibit can greatly help people put static exhibits into a broader ecological context. Science, for its part, benefits from increased public interest and support, which may translate into money for additional work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.