Saving One Million Acres for Two Thousand Years: Billy Campbell at TEDxGreenville
Channel: TEDx Talks
Date: 2013-05-02

Americans spend 20 billion dollars per year on funerals, and the number of funerals will soon increase as the baby boomers generate a death boom. In the next 25 years, less than 10% of this income could protect and restore more than 1 million acres of natural landscape. Conservation burial grounds can help capture this funding source and provide long lasting connections between human and natural communities. Several financially successful projects are up and running, and ancient antecedents prove potential durability.

Dr. Billy Campbell, with the help of his wife Kimberley, founded Memorial Ecosystems in 1996 and developed the world's first conservation burial ground, Ramsey Creek, in 1998. He has worked closely with land conservation groups and others to develop seven other projects. The Green Burial Council adopted a number of the standards he developed as a part of their own Green Burial Standards. Working with SC's Upstate Forever, he helped develop the first comprehensive easement and operations agreement for a conservation burial ground.

Billy has been interested in land conservation and ecology from a young age and received his B.S. in Biology from Emory University in 1977 and an MD from Medical University of South Carolina in 1981. He is a practicing physician in his hometown, Westminster, South Carolina, and also serves as a hospice physician. He purchased 150 acres of coastal forest in southeastern Costa Rica for the conservation organization ANAI, and has served on its board for many years. He and Kimberley provided significant financial assistance for TNC to purchase Buzzard's Roost, now a 550-acre South Carolina Heritage Trust Preserve that protects the unique flora of SC's only significant marble outcrop.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)