Overnight visitors are expected to find lodging and necessities in the villages surrounding Palaikastro to the south, a few minutes away.

The next most general park system imposed on Vai is the Natura 2000 protected areas mandated by the European Union in conjunction with the government of Greece.

The abandoned land on the Itanos peninsula of Cape Sidero, from which the national park had been created by eminent domain, is a refugium (biological "refuge") for indigenous plant and animal species, many rare or endangered, as well as a station of the migration routes for a large number of migratory birds.

The resulting Itanos Archaeological Survey conducted during the period 1994-2005 had located roughly 100-200 sites covering occupation of the cape since the Neolithic.

In 2015 a third level of park was applied, the Sitia UNESCO Global Geopark, protecting the geological formations of all of east Crete.

It can't do anything contrary to the dictates of the parkland, which is administered as a Natura 2000 protected area, and yet it otherwise owns the land and retains the rights of owners.

"[12][x] These peripatetics, as they were called,[xi] were the closest persons the ancient Greeks had to scientists, because of their insistence on theorizing from data actually investigated.

[xii] Their method was to apply the new logic Aristotle had devised for the classification of data and the art of definition, which is the ancestor of modern biological uses.

[xv] Linnaeus kept the system, but added standard levels of type and insisted on public authorization of the resulting names.

Although the forest was declared a national park in 1987 and was fenced, which probably saved it from destruction by 200,000 or more visitors per year, no effort was made to recover it until Project Vai staged by the European Commission 1999-2002 in compliance with the Habitats Directive of Natura 2000.

The Management Plan put into effect by the government as part of Natura 2000 recovered a core forest, today carefully protected.

In addition to the monastery, the Forest Directorate of Lasithi and the Goulandris Natural History Museum were made caretakers.

Within it an intermittent stream emerges from the northern hill and flows down to a wetlands, providing just the amount of water required for the trees.

About 1 km (0.62 mi) of good, paved road runs along the south side of the forest from which it is separated by a barbed-wire fence.

A restaurant and other buildings have been built up on the slope of the south hill, where also a managed trail leads over the heights to Psili Ammos beach.

They did some excavating and drew some plans, concluding finally that the remains were a substantial residence of the Late Minoan period, which they dubbed Vai Villa.

Returning in 1994-2005 the French School in collaboration with other agencies conducted the Itanos Archaeological Survey on the northeast peninsula north of Vai.

The other 9 of the 15 were entirely Greco-Roman, from which one might suppose, assuming data representative of the original populations, that the Minoans were lightly settled in that area, but the later Greeks more heavily.

Toplou Monastery, owner of the farm, the tavern, and the real estate at Vai, had decided to support its development as a recreational area.

The original plan shows a partial foundation of 6 rooms arranged in two wings meeting in a concave corner seen from outside the house.

They contained green schist paving stones forming a ramp on the rising ground, and were interpreted as risers that had fallen into the space below the staircase.

The minimum possible area of two equal floors (but the house may have been split-level) might have been roughly 4000 square feet, not large enough for a Minoan public building (which were huge) but too large for a single humble family, hence the conclusion of the excavators that it was "an isolated private house," probably the villa of a substantial country farmer.

With the proceeds they had the money for charitability, operating a free school for the local inhabitants, and maintaining a hostel, dining facility, museum, and whatever else seemed most appropriate.

They began making decisions that were highly profitable but disastrous to the environment and cultural sites, such as clearing out the majority of Vai palm forest in favor of arable cropland.

These decisions came to the attention of a new generation of scientists and responsible governmentalists, whose first reaction was to sequester monastery land by turning it into parkland.

The monastery brought the case to a final test by leasing land to a British development corporation, Minoan Group.

Having obtained the licenses they required from local government, they began work in 2006, bulldozing parts of Vai farm to create a parking lot to which they planned to bus large numbers of tourists.

A general protest and lawsuit was brought by the citizenry in the Cavo Sidero dispute, which ended in the Supreme Administrative Court.

In opposition, the archaeologists, Oliver Rackham and Jennifer Moody, obtained a petition with 11,000 signatures from persons in many countries, asking for a remission against the threat to the countryside.

In 2017 the Supreme Court rejected the request, siding with the legality of the decree, and bringing up some technicalities of its own, such as that the applicants had not proved they were residents of Lasithi.