Because relict features are no longer forming today, any artificial damage to them is irreversible, and the destruction of such features will result in their permanent loss. Their protection therefore requires controls on such activities as artificial excavation.

On the other hand, the protection of such features does not require maintenance of the broader processes which formed them, since those processes have ceased anyway. Thus, in contrast to active process systems, the protection of relict features can often be achieved with a largely site-based approach that mostly considers the protection of the specific feature itself with less need to consider the ongoing processes in surrounding regions. This is the approach usually taken to the protection of, for example, important fossil exposures: provided the exposure site itself is protected from excessive artificial excavation or covering, and from accelerated erosion or mass movement, then the geoheritage values of the site will be preserved even though ongoing landforming processes in the surrounding region may be altered by human activities. However, it is important to be aware that this is a generalisation, and that there will be cases in which artificial disturbances in the broader surrounding environment will result in process changes, such as increased fluvial erosion and sedimentation, that may impact on the values of the significant site itself (as for example, a significant fossil site in a river bank which is at risk of eroding away due to unnaturally increased flooding resulting from human disturbances in the catchment).