Conservationists push for 'green burial'

A proposed 10-acre ``green burial" site is a small but singular component of an ambitious conservation and community development project underway about 15 miles southeast of Santa Fe. It's part of a small but growing movement to offer environmentally conscious cemeteries and protect open land in the bargain.

Commonwealth Conservancy is buying a 13,000-acre ranch, of which nearly 12,000 acres is slated for preservation as open space available for use by the public.

``The landscape is gorgeous, just spectacular classic West -- buttes and grasslands and mountains," said Ted Harrison, founder and president of the conservancy.

Development on a small slice of the ranch -- principally 300 acres devoted to a mixed-use, mixed-income village of as many as 965 homes -- is providing the money for the project, the Galisteo Basin Preserve.

A ``memorial landscape" that Sehee is planning about a mile from the village would be open to residents and nonresidents, for the earth-friendly burial of ashes or of unembalmed bodies in biodegradable boxes or in shrouds.

It also would fund conservation: Roughly half of what someone pays to be buried on the property would be used to buy and preserve nearby acreage.

Harrison said combining conservation and environmentally conscious development makes sense, particularly as public money for land acquisition dwindles and ranchers in the West face increasing economic pressures to sell.

``I think it's one of the ways that we can preserve the open space and habitat values of these historic ranches," said Harrison, who spent 18 years with the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization.

And while he acknowledges that in the world of romanticized real estate pitches ``you don't do death in a master-planned community," Harrison said having a burial site near the proposed village -- with its homes, shops, schools, and workplaces -- will make for a more complete community.

``If that cemetery is there as a reminder of life's fragility and preciousness, what a difference in the consciousness of this community," Harrison said.