Last month, we were notified by the Green Burial Council (GBC) that our application was for their Natural Cemetery Certification had been accepted. This makes Campo de Estrellas the third cemetery in Texas to hold certification with the GBC, and the only cemetery in the state recognized as a fully-certified Natural Burial Cemetery.

This is thrilling news and marks a huge milestone for us. The Green Burial Council is North America’s premier natural burial certification and education organization, and to be included in their growing list of recognized practitioners is an honor. Our decision to pursue certification with the GBC stemmed from our desire to help expand the natural burial movement. The GBC has a long history of helping raise awareness of the benefits of ‘green’ burial and the more cemeteries certified with them, the more visible the movement becomes.

Founded in 2005 (back when “green” was still a new term associated with environmental concerns), they established the first set of standards for natural burial practitioners and products to ensure the highest levels of environmental sustainability, business integrity, and consumer protection. This helped to legitimize natural burial within a frankly hostile funeral industry and to a skeptical (read: uninformed) community. Beyond setting standards, they are a major hub of information and education for anyone interested in natural burial. We at Campo de Estrellas have relied on their free resources extensively in building our cemetery and regularly refer families to them for additional information.

The process of becoming GBC certified took us about a year. First, we had to determine which level of certification we wanted to achieve. The GBC has three tiers: Hybrid, Natural, and Conservation. A Hybrid cemetery allows for both natural and conventional burials (use of vaults, metal caskets, etc.). Many existing cemeteries opt for this level as it allows them to continue to offer their conventional services, while adding newer plots that are green.

A Natural Burial Cemetery allows only natural burials, requires an ecological assessment of the cemetery site, and sets aside a percentage of business funds into a perpetual care fund, among other standards. We had our ecological assessment done by Wildlife Habitat Conservation (WHF Texas). They provided us with a dossier of vital information regarding our land including the soil types across the entire acreage, elevation levels, and areas of ecological sensitivity. Crucially, they also provided us with recommended rewilding techniques to promote plant diversity and encourage a return of wildlife that had been driven away due to development and agriculture practices. Even if we hadn’t applied for GBC certification, we still would have pursued an ecological assessment as it gives us baseline of data upon which we can monitor our inputs and measure our outcomes to test out our theory that natural burial really does benefit the land.

A Conservation Cemetery must operate under contract with a conservation organization in the form of a conservation easement, conserve a minimum amount of land, and establish strategies to conserve and rewild that land. Land conservation and rewilding are at the heart of what we do here at Campo de Estrellas Conservation Cemetery. It’s so important to us that we put it in our name! The same goes for establishing a conservation easement. A conservation easement is a legal agreement between landowners and a land trust that protects the land from development and sustains conservation activities on it, in perpetuity. This means that even after the original landowners are no longer around, the land trust holding the easement monitors and maintains the land, ensuring it remains a natural landscape. When we first began planning, the longevity of our project was at the forefront of our minds and using an easement to protect it has long been our goal.

We are continuing to pursue a pathway toward establishing an easement on our cemetery as well as the additional acreage surrounding it. The process of obtaining a conservation easement is a longer one, involving sustained relationship-building with conservation organizations and significant financial resources for things like legal counsel. All of this is to say that while we may not have the easement in place yet, we have not abandoned our long-term land conservation plans and goals. Using natural burials as a way to protect land, assessing the land for ecological sensitivities and opportunities, and offering people a meaningful way to engage with nature is already central to our practice. Our GBC certification only deepens our commitment to these goals.