Balancing use and preservation in cultural heritage management

The management of cultural heritage places is compared with natural area management. Differences stem from the disciplines of the managers, and that cultural heritage resources are non-renewable. In the conservation of cultural resources there is a strong reliance on preservation, and the exclusion of activities which may reduce heritage value. This results in a tendency to remove heritage sites and items from the experience of the community which ‘owns’ the heritage. The conservation strategy for natural systems of acquiring the highly significant, as well as representative samples of biogeography in protected areas has lessons for heritage conservation. At the site level, heritage management rarely uses the range of tools potentially available, largely because of the reliance and emphasis on preservation. The paper proposes that greater community acceptance of heritage conservation will result in a more definitive expression of value and significance, and in tying this to function. Tools to manage the use of significant sites to reduce damage are given.