Conserving Wildness

Conserving Wildness. National Treasure. , A Place for Solitude , In this vast landscape, you can immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, and textures of the natural world. Listen to a penetrating silence, broken only by the rasping call of a raven overhead. Walk amid rock formations that conceal yet-to-be-discovered prehistoric plants and animals. Glimpse the birth of a hundred waterfalls after a summer deluge. You're looking out over some of the wildest lands in the United States. The last area to be mapped in the lower 48 states, this rugged region remains a sparsely roaded frontier. , You're standing in the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, where conserving the land's wild character is a top priority. These public lands don't just protect astounding scientific values. They safeguard one of the rarest natural resources of all , the opportunity for solitude , in a landscape sculpted by wind, water, and time., Learning from the Land , The public lands of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument conserve a wealth of scientific and cultural resources. On the remote Kaiparowits Plateau, paleontologists are unearthing prehistoric species, like duck-billed dinosaurs and gigantic crocodiles, that help explain the origins of present-day life on earth. Massive petrified logs in the Circle Cliffs reveal clues about long-ago ecosystems. The winding canyons of the Escalante River drainage conceal artifacts of ancient peoples that illuminate an enduring relationship with this land.,