Okay. I'd like to call to order the 75th meeting of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. Welcome, everybody. It's good to see you all. I'll turn this over to Rudy. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Let me begin by reminding you that the open session of Council is video cast live with minimal delay and archived. So the URL will be available for your mothers at the end of the meeting. We're going to start by welcoming our Counselor Liaison, Ellen Giarelli from the International Society of Nurses and Genetics, Joe McInerney from the American Society of Human Genetics, James O'Leary from the Genetic Alliance, Rhonda Schaunberg from the National Society of Genetic Counselors, and Judith Beckendorf for the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Thank you all for spending the day with us today. We have a number of new staff members to introduce to the Council. Every summer, the Extramural Research Program turns over about half of the Program Analyst's position. So we have several people to introduce. When I call your name, would you please stand so the Council can identify you? Kachina Bossett. Kachina has a Bachelor of Science degree in Health Science and Public Health and is currently working towards her Master's degree in Life Science. She comes to us from NIAMS where she provided support services for intramural investigators there. She is the Scientific Program Analyst in the Division of Extramural Operations. She works on data access requests submitted by the extramural investigators, and she also provides support to the review branch. Collette Fletcher Hoppe. Collette is a recent graduate of Vassar College where she obtained a BA in Biology and an Associates Degree in History. Collette is involved in protein capture, ignite, and functional variation grants. Thank you, Collette. Kevin Lee. Kevin is also a graduate of Vassar College, has an undergraduate degree in Biology and a minor in Mathematics. Kevin will be supporting the Genome Sequencing Program and Bioinformatics portfolio of grants as well. Elion Silverman. Elion graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, and she has prior experience doing scientific administrative work via several summer internships at the National Science Foundation. Elion supports TCGA and CSER projects and the Genomic Medicine Working Group of Council. Thank you, Elion. Laura Scow. Laura graduated from Pomona College with a BA degree in Neuroscience. She has experience working in science education and outreach programs for underserved communities. Laura works on the H3Africa Common Fund Program. Kira Wong. Kira is a recent graduate from Swarthmore College. She earned a degree in Biology and minor in English Lit. Kira works on Emerge and ClinGen. Thank you, Kira. We have several new staff in the Division of Policy Communications and Education, or DPCE, to you, Genomic Konoshenti. John Ohab. John is the new Chief of the Communications and Public Liaison Branch. Before coming to NHGRI, Dr. Ohab worked at the Naval Research Laboratory where he served as the Head of Communications and Social Media. He has also been involved in the development of new communication strategies for the Department of Defense and several new startups. This is not John's first time at NIH. Several years ago, he was a AAA Fellow and served as a Policy Analyst at NIMH. So welcome back to NIH, John. Christina Kapusti. Christina is a new Senior Health Policy Analyst working in the Policy and Program Analysis Branch. Christina has a Master's Degree in Biotechnology from Georgetown University. Before coming to NHGRI, she worked as a Program Manager for one of NHGRI's Ignite grantees at the University of California, San Francisco. Kelsey Stastrom. Kelsey is the new Special Assistant and Program Analyst to Laura Rodriguez. Kelsey is a recent graduate from Georgetown University with a Master's Degree in Biomedical Science, Policy, and Advocacy. Kelsey will support scientific and policy-based initiatives performed across DPCE. Donna Messersmith-Jones. Say again. Oh, dear, too bad. Well, Donna, is a Science Program Analyst in Genomic Healthcare Branch at DPCE. Donna works on a number of genomic education projects for health professionals, including the Genetics Genomics Competency Center, or G2C2. Emily Nevere. Emily is the Chief of the Management Analysis and Workforce Development Branch. Before coming to NHGRI, Emily worked at the National Institutes of Mental Health as the Chief of the Ethics Branch. Rebecca Hong. Rebecca is a recent graduate of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and she is a Program Analyst working in the Policy and Program Analysis Branch at DPCE. Rebecca will be working on Congressional Reporting, Legislation, Tracking, and NHGRI's Messaging Efforts. Thank you, Rebecca. And Michael Hahn. Michael is a Scientific Program Analyst who is working with Vince Bonham, and Vince, of course, is the Advisor to the Director on Genomics and Health Disparities in the Office of the Director. Thank you. That's it for the new staff. I think we'll have a quiz at launch and see how many of you can remember their names. Okay, I seek approval of the May Council Minutes. There's a copy that was put into the Electronic Council Book. Are there any comments or corrections that the Council wishes to make to the May Minutes? All right, can I have a motion to accept the minutes or approve them? And a second? All in favor? Any opposed? Any abstaining? Thank you. On the Open Session Agenda, let me draw your attention to the next six Council meeting dates. If any of you note a conflict with your schedule, please notify me and, more importantly, notify Comfort Brown so we can help you work around that. And with that, I'm going to turn things over to Eric for the Director's Report.


For member states of the UN to reinforce and recommit to the SDGs as a development agenda, there's a lot of momentum in the global climate agenda and the global nature agenda, but it's really important that issues that relate to poverty, to economic development, to rural and urban development, that they become part, and that you really manage to integrate these issues across the three main global agendas. It is my hope that member states will not only re-affirm their commitment to the sustainable development goals, but will also take tangible action to provide financing and policy support to achieving those goals, especially in the context of those areas where the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine have reversed some of the very, very difficult gains that were made in the first half of the SDG payment. We really need a big consensus around the achievement of SDGs, and we have no much time, so we really need a new commitment to achieving them. We need cooperation, and we need to overcome the very deep-set challenges of great power competition. And so what SDSN is trying to do is to support that effort of building a level of global governance around internationally-agreed objectives.


From The Conversation, this is Essays on Air, where we bring you the best and most beautiful writing by Australian researchers. I'm Sunanda Kray and today I'm reading you an essay by Michael Adams, Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oolongong. It's titled The Cultural Meanings of Wild Horses. I am walking quietly through the forest. As I reach the edge of the trees, there is a snot and a staccato of hoofbeats, and four horses materialize only meters in front of me, a foal, two mares, and a dark stallion. The stallion, ears pricked, tosses his head and prances forward. As I crouch to pick up a branch, the stallion wheels and gallops off with the group.  The next minutes are completely mesmerizing. The two stallions fight, 50 meters from me. Dust hangs in the air around them. Their screams echo off the hills. The impact of their hoof strikes reverberates in my belly. They rear, scream. Snake heads out to bite, whirl and kick. Eventually, bleeding and bruised, the dark stallion breaks and runs. The gray makes a show of chasing, then canters back to the mares. Arching his neck, prancing with lifted tail. This is one of the many times I've seen horses called brumbies in Australia, in the mountains. While cross country skiing in the south, I've watched them in the snow, ragged mains flying, galloping through a mist of ice crystals and many times while driving and bushwalking, both in the north and the south of Kosiosko National Park. I've also watched them cantering through clouds of dust in central Australia and grazing in the swamps of Kakadu. Each of these wild horse encounters has been deeply visceral and emotional, elemental expressions of life in dramatic and beautiful landscapes. Horses are large, powerful and charismatic animals and humans have ancient connections to them. Wild horses are dominant among the 13 species painted on the caves of Chauvet in France 30,000 years ago. And while there continues to be debate, archaeologists suggest evidence for horse domestication is at least 5,500 years old. And like the oldest human animal relationship outside hunting with dogs, the horse relationship is unique because we now mostly do not eat this animal. Like dogs, horses now appear on every continent except Antarctica and humans have been the primary agent for their dispersal. In North America, where the first true horses evolved and then died out, they were reintroduced by Columbus in 1493. Horses are the most recent of the main species humans domesticated and the least different with cats from their wild counterparts. Australia has the largest wild horse herd in the world. Maybe 400,000 or more horses spread across nearly every bioregion from the tropical north to the arid centre to the alpine areas. That sounds like a dramatically large number, but Australia also has around one million domestic horses, about a hundred million cattle and sheep, maybe 20 million feral pigs and 25 million kangaroos. But the presence of wild horses here is deeply controversial. Six thousand of these horses are in Kosiosco National Park. Ongoing controversy around these wild horses encompasses debate about their impact and their cultural meaning. There is very little systematic research and a large amount of emotive and anecdotal argument from both sides. There is circularity and self-referencing in government wild horse management plans. Very little reference to studies from Australia and almost no peer reviewed research on horse impacts in the Snowy Mountains, despite decades of argument that they cause environmental degradation. And Kosiosco is right next to Canberra and the Australian Capital Territory, which has the largest per capita horse ownership of anywhere in Australia. Several enterprises run horse trekking trips in the Snowy Mountains, often interacting with brumbies. The Dalghetti and Coriong annual shows on the boundaries of the park highlight horse skills, including catching and gentling brumbies. In many places, mountain cattle properties are increasingly using horses instead of motorbikes to handle stock. The Kosiosco wild horses are also tangled within the embedded idiosyncrasies and contradictions of the largest national park in New South Wales. Here, there are protected populations of two species of invasive fish, brown and rainbow trout that are demonstrably responsible for local extinctions of native fish and frog species. A gigantic hydroelectric scheme with dominant infrastructure across large areas of the park and expanding ski resorts where it's possible to buy lodges. Much of the landscape that is now part of the park has a long history of summer grazing by sheep and cattle. This wilderness has been home to Aboriginal people for millennia, as well as well-known grazing grounds for more than a century. These complexities and contradictions reflect our often unconscious modern propensity for hubris. We insist we are in charge of what happens on this planet, including its wild places and wild species. Terms like land management, natural resource management and conservation management all reflect this assumption of superiority and control. The United States has similar controversies around the management of mustangs across large areas of the West. New Zealand has the Caymanawa Horses, a special and isolated herd on army land. In both of those countries, as in Australia, there is a unique history of horse interactions with indigenous communities. The great native American horse cultures are well known and extraordinary. As Indians had no introduction to equestrian skills from the Spanish invaders, they learned extremely quickly from scratch. The first horses in New Zealand were a gift to Māori communities from missionary Samuel Marston in 1814, and a Waitangi Tribunal claim has been brought to protect the Caymanawa Horses as Māori teonga or treasures. Aboriginal stockmen and stockwomen were the mainstay of the pastoral industry all over Australia until the equal wage ruling of 1968 resulted in the wholesale expulsion of Aboriginal stock workers in North and Central Australia. Peter Mitchell's recent book, Horse Nations, uses that term to describe the people-animal relationship in certain indigenous communities. Both Native American and Aboriginal cosmologies often place animals, including horses, as their own nations, with whom they have a responsibility to respectfully interact. The wild horses of the Australian Alps are arguably the strongest cultural icons. The enduring legacy of the man from Snowy River, both the iconic Banjo-Patterson poem and the 1980s film passed around that the cult from old regret had got away and adjoined the wild bush horses. He was worth a thousand pounds so all the cracks had gathered to the fray. All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far but also the silver brumby series of novels by Alain Mitchell, still in print after nearly 70 years, idealised the strength, beauty and spirit of these wild mountain horses. At least one source suggests that the man from Patterson's poem was in fact a young Aboriginal rider. This is not at all implausible. There is much documentation as well as strong oral histories of Aboriginal men and women working stock on horseback across the Snowy Mountains. The Aboriginal mountain missions at Brungle and Delegate both have many stories of earlier generations working as stock riders and also mustering wild mountain horses. David Dixon, Ngarigo Elder, says our old people were animal lovers. They would have had great respect for these powerful horse spirits. Our people have always been accepting of visitors to our land and quite capable of adapting to change so that our visitors can also belong and have their place. While the iconic figures of the cowboy and stockman is masculine, amongst Aboriginal stock workers, women and girls were likely as common as men and boys. In contemporary times, women fire out number men in equestrian participation and Brungle defenders are equally represented by men and women. Four Australian horse women generously shared their knowledge and skills in the research that backgrounds this essay. In the mid-1970s, I worked as a ranger in Cosiosco National Park. In those days, rangering was a seat of the pants enterprise. We used to buy at least part of our uniforms out of our own money because the issued items were so inadequate and we taught ourselves to cross-country ski. We drank socially with the Brungle runners and other people from the surrounding rural communities. In many places, rangers were and are intimately part of the community, not seen as public servants. There is a complex and interesting relationship between the university-educated national park staff and local rural workers with deeply embodied knowledge and skills, with rangers acknowledging that they need the skills of these locals to carry out much of the animal-related work in the parks, including trapping and mustering wild horses. Recent proposals to helicopter shoot large numbers of wild horses in Cosiosco would potentially sever this link. Helicopter shooting requires specific marksmanship skills not common in rural communities. While we debate how to reduce our wild horse numbers, other countries are working to re-establish wild horse herds in Europe and Asia. It is often argued that domestications saved horses and many other species from extinction, aiding their establishment all over the planet, while their wild ancestors diminished or disappeared. Creating populations of newly wild species is termed both re-wilding and de-domestication, and there are numerous and increasing examples around the world. Some of these proposals include the re-establishment of species long extinct, or their ecological equivalents. In the period increasingly accepted as to the Anthropocene, species are both declining and flourishing. Domesticated species have been moved all over the world. Other introduced species flourish in new landscapes. In the oceans, as large predators have declined, all the cephalopods, octopus, squid and cuttlefish are increasing. Highly specialized species that evolved on isolated islands have declined precipitously, while generalist species are flourishing. Global conservation management attempts to work against both of these trends. We attempt to suppress populations of flourishing species while supporting or increasing populations of declining ones, including through translocations and captive breeding programs. These activities call into question the nature of nature in the 21st century. What is the wild in all this management and manipulation? In these questions, the lives and cosmologies of indigenous peoples and the lives of other species offer us serious teachings. The agency and intelligence of animals, the increasing discoveries of distinct cultures among animal populations, the agents of planetary systems and continually reorganizing around changing inputs, all stand against modern human insistence on control, stability and stasis. While hiking mountain grasslands looking for wild horse bands, I have several times come across horse skeletons whitening in the sunlight. Their energy and power transmuted back into the source from where their new lives will spring. In a world where human societies are increasingly narcissistic, where our dominant concern is ourselves, recognizing the agency and the intelligence of other species can be deeply humbling. Perhaps our task is to harmonize ourselves with these old and new environments, not continually attempt to manage them into some other state that we in our hubris think is more desirable, whether ecologically, economically or culturally. Special thanks to Adrienne Corridini, Jen Owens, Blair Carlin and Tonya Gray for improving my understanding of horse and brumby issues. Today's episode was edited by Sarah Matthews. You can see a full list of audio and music credits on our website at theconversation.com.


The earlier ones, those who came first into these hills, could not have known of the fortune that was spilled about them, spilled lavishly over each hill and across the level floors of the valley. For the first ones, a growing tree was in a sense another enemy lurking in the darkness of his primeval world. It was a thing that had to be wrestled to the ground before the land was cleared. It stood defiantly in the way of his roads. It matched its ancient strength against his arms, its numbers mocked his solitude. There was exultation on the sound of a tree crashing to the earth. Each log was a weapon newly forged. Each flickering fire that pushed back the night was a symbol of victory. All that has changed now. The forests that brooded over these hills have given up their secrets. Fields planted in precise geometry drink in the sun where once the sun could never come. Giant highways slashed through valleys that earlier knew only the gentle communication of the wind. What was once an enemy has become a friend. What once withheld now lavishly bestows. But like the magician's gift in an ancient tale, there is a condition to this heritage over the land. Use this gift wisely, we are told, or it will vanish. Surrender to ignorance or greed and all the magic in the world will be powerless to bring back a single twig or summon up the shadow of a shack. The National Broadcasting Company, in collaboration with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, presents Heritage Over the Land, the story of the growth of the timber industry in the south. It is the third in a series of programs designed to interpret the renaissance lately born in the south. To that end, we made a pilgrimage across a dozen states. Talked to the men and women who are actors in this latter-day revolution, watched and listened, made our notes for reference and found that we had been witnesses to a revolution. It is, we believe, one of the most significant developments of our generation, for surely no area in the world has made such rapid changes gone so far or so fast as the American South in the years since World War II. The National Broadcasting Company assigned Henry Cassidy to guide us on this odyssey and to report on what he saw and heard and felt. Mr. Cassidy. In a sense, the development of the timber industry was symbolic of the changes we were later to witness throughout the south. For me, the story began one warm afternoon on the banks of a busy little stream in South Carolina. Mr. B. U. Ratchford, professor of economics at Duke University, was talking about the south and the strange changes that have evolved here in the past few years. He was seeking, I think, an origin, a starting out place that might give us a basis for understanding the changes we would see. A hint perhaps came from the hills above us. We were surrounded by a heavy wood and the stream at our feet was black with logs floating down to the mill. With the magic of our own compounding, I caught his words. The south's resources has been of tremendous importance. If I may cite two particular cases. First, our water supply. Water is becoming more and more important in modern industry. In petroleum refining, in paper and pulp, in synthetic fiber, in almost any industry you can mention, the use of water has been increasing by leaps and bounds. And in many parts of the United States, the water supply is definitely limited. The south still has an abundant supply of water. And this has been a drawing card for many industries. Another, of course, is our large and abundant supplies of timber. In the paper and pulp industry, in the synthetic fiber industries, this is their basic raw material. And they need to be near their sources of supply. The south as a region can provide more timber per year than all the rest of the United States put together. It was natural that sooner or later we would come to the doors of the huge wood and paper plant at Georgetown, South Carolina, the Southern Craft Division of the International Paper Company. This place, so alive with the sounds and smells of industry, had but lately sprung into being as if by some fresh act of creation. Here were hundreds of men, giant machinery whose wheels were never stopped and whose voice was never stilled. As though goaded by some gargantuan appetite, giant cranes spooked up huge servings of logs and dropped them into a yawning mouth that stood ever open. Pine logs, still fragrant from the forests above the mill, began the process that would end in boxes and crates and long rolls of paper. What was curious is that only a few years ago no one bothered to reap this harvest. The pines are not suitable for saw wood, as they call it, and the scrubby little trees were burned for firewood or left to time. Now their processing is one of the most important and profitable industries in the South. Chemistry, like the alchemist's dream, has touched them with gold. Mix the potion well and the result can be measured in terms of yearly income, a raised standard of living, a better chance for a new generation. Listen to Mr. C. E. Lachlan, chemist of the Georgetown Mill, as he gives us the secret. The word Kraft is another word for the sulfate process. The words in themselves are synonymous. Kraft is the Swedish or German word meaning strength or strong. This process consists of utilizing sodium sulfate to make a cooking liquor to what we call delignify the wood into pulp. This sodium sulfate in itself is an inactive chemical, but it is fed to furnaces under reducing flame which reduces this sodium sulfate to active sodium sulfide and at the same time produces a certain amount of caustic soda. The cooking liquor that we feed into the digestive to cook the pulp is composed of approximately 75% caustic soda and 25% sodium sulfide. During the cook, this sodium sulfide is combined back to sodium sulfate again. The caustic soda goes to sodium carbonate and that liquor is then recycled back through the furnaces again and used over and over to continue the cycle. Before the mill came to town, this was a sleepy time-haunted place, but now this story. Mr. Howard Hinman, manager of the Georgetown Mill Southern Craft Division of the International Paper Company. The Georgetown Mill employs 1,800 hourly employees and 200 on salary. Our production is 1,700 tons a day. We operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Howard, maybe you could translate that production for us. What does that paper amount to? That tonnage, if it was laid on a highway in 24 hours, it would run from Boston to Atlanta, Georgia. Then Howard, tell me this, you as manager of this mill, how do you see the future? Henry, as I understand it, before the International Paper Company came to Georgetown, people had their front door knobs polished, but the back door steps were rotting down. Now everybody has repaired their back door steps, houses are painted, and the mill runs continuous 24 hours a day, and it's here to stay in Georgetown. There's a saying in lumber areas that they can use every part of a tree but the shadow. I'm willing to believe that. Even the stumps, traditionally a symbol of the stubbornness of the woodlands have yielded up their reward. After the lumbermen have passed through, others come to remove the stumps. It was one hot afternoon down in Pensacola, Florida, when Mr. J. H. McCormick, president of Newport Industries, told me about this new industry. Years ago, this whole area was thickly covered with pine forests.  We come along behind the lumbering operations and take out these stumps and process them in our plants into turpentine, rosin, pine oil, and many other chemicals. After we have taken the stumps out of the lands, the portion of the land is replanted in pine trees to produce new raw material for the tremendously important paper industry. Mr. McCormick, I noticed that you call your product here naval stores. Does that mean the United States Navy or what does that mean? In the early colonial days, pine trees were processed for the production of pitch and rosin. This pitch and rosin was used for the caulking of wooden ships, and for that reason the resinous material from the pine trees was called naval stores. The products which we produce which are classified as naval stores are rosin, turpentine, and pine oil. All of the derivatives and other products we produce are classified as resin and terpene chemicals. And the mark of these things is clear. What effect we asked, does this have on business? It means that the timberland owners, labor, and the railroads are paid approximately 18 million dollars annually. Then Mr. McCaffrey, what would you say that means to the average farmer in this three state area? Out of every five dollars, approximately one dollar comes from forest products. We're at the beginning of the pulp paper industry. The sound you hear is that of a power saw. We're in a forest outside Georgetown, South Carolina, and here the power saw is cutting down the pine tree that moves on to pulp and eventually to paper. This power saw looks something like an outboard motor without a boat. It's portable, one man operating it and instead of the boat in front of it is the chain saw that cuts through the wood like a knife through butter. After cutting down the tree, the same saw is used with the same one man operator to cut the logs up into proper lengths to be shipped out of this forest to the plant. But I remembered the words from an ancient tale. Use this gift wisely or it will vanish. Surrender to ignorance, agreed, and all the magic in the world will be powerless to bring back a single twig or summon up the shadow of a shadow. What is being done to ensure that this gift will not vanish? What is the guarantee that this wealth will not wither in the space of a man's life? Mr. F. C. Gregg, Division Forester of the International Paper Company, gave me this answer. The South is just now really beginning to practice intensive forestry. The trend has been much more marked in the last few years about 15 to 18 years ago. The business of growing timber on a scientific basis in the South really got underway and the progress in the last 15 years has been phenomenal. How would you account for the fact that it's just in the last 15 years that this has come about? Well, of course, there has to be an economic basis for any operation. And the growing of timber in the South really got its impetus from the development of a market for timber that could be grown with the development of the pop and paper industry. In other words, now it's possible to use wood profitably that could not be used before? That's right. Because the pop and paper industry can use a much smaller tree and a much poorer quality tree than is merchantable for any other product in quantity. And that means that the southern pine is now usable. But what is it in the pulp industry that makes that possible in the last 15 years where it was not possible before? Well, the pulp industry had a very few units in the South prior to 15 years ago. The rapid development of the pop and paper industry has taken place here in the last 15 year period. Mr. Gregg, I was interested to note that you put first among the responsibilities of a forest, a prevention of fire. Is that your greatest danger? Fire is our greatest handicap in growing crops of timber in the South today. Could you give us some indication of the prevalence of fire? That is the seriousness of it. Well, to be specific, in the state of South Carolina, we have about 8,000 fires a year, woods fires, which burn about a quarter of a million acres of land. This is a fire, a forest fire. Who started it or why doesn't matter now? Already it's three days old. Already it has swept down from a hill across the valley and is creeping up the other side. Standing nearby, the smoke stabs at our eyes. The smell is bitter, like the smell of death. The flame moves slowly, it seems, but with a terrible, inevitable pace, as though it knows its strength and has no need for speed. Three days and two nights it is burned, choking the valley with smoke and at night sending up a weird challenge to the star-filled skies. While things driven from their homes flee before it like frightened refugees from something they do not comprehend. Even the men who fight it are driven back. In the end, of course, man will win if victory can be measured by the hour, the precise minute when the last ember is stamped out. A rain will come or a stream will throw up a barrier to the licking flame, but by that time, of course, the battle is actually lost. The real victory can never be measured. This comes in tiny things.  This is the real victory. Already the never-ending unspectacular fight for fire prevention has begun. Each person who goes into the woods must be told that, like a sentinel on guard, he must never relax. Now we have mentioned fire protection. How some of the means that we can get better fire protection. Now we're in a school room in Georgetown, South Carolina. Here the training begins. Would someone like to try that question? Larry? We've got to educate the public and make them know that the beauty of forest are theirs to be enjoyed by everyone. But what's more important that a large portion of the people in South Carolina get their income partially or all of their income from the forest. And especially to be warned of the occasional hunters and campers who go in the woods and aren't careful with their cigarettes and matches and forest fires. They must be made to understand that while they're in the woods, these things should be handled with precaution. Bill? Fire protection can also be bettered by having stricter laws and enforcement. Penalties for deliberately burning other people's lands should be heavier and the enforcement of these penalties should be stricter. Men clever in propaganda were imported to teach the need for care in handling fire in the woods. But perhaps because they were imported their words had only mild success. The best results come from one who was born to these hills and lived with them. He told his stories simply and the very simplicity gave it strength. He hated fires because he loved the woods and half the nation listened. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jelly Elliot. We're going to feature our fiddle player here on this next tune. It's the one that he won the contest with and it's really a popular tune among all hold down fiddle players. I want all you old timers just to gather yourself up there and listen the way Jack does it. The old hen cackled and the rooster lady. Well getting back to that pine cone, I can't help but think about that pine bird. Some people call it pine bird, pine cones, all the same thing.  If you don't know what you're looking for you never in the world find one, especially after it hits in the grass. Boy it's just like hunting a needle in a haystack. But it does its part, it falls down and gets down in amongst this grass and takes roots and comes on up and makes a little small pine tree. And until this little tree is, it's got to have a lot of age on it before you can hardly find it unless you really know what you're looking for. You have to get down in there and scratch around in the grass to find it. Now this guy come along a few days after I was at this old house place and for some reason I don't know he got careless. But this fire got into this old field and friends you know how an old field is. It's grown up in grass and usually grass is knee deep and sometimes deeper. And then in certain times of year this grass gets dead and dry. And the smallest of spark will set it on fire and you do have a bad fire there because these little pine trees, thousands of them down under there, they haven't got a chance. They can't run and get out of the way. You just can't realize how much stuff it destroys just from one guy getting careless with a match. And well, we just got to do something about it. I hope you friends out there realize these things and you can help me keep these little trees. I'll help you and you help me. It's the same old case as you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. He speaks in jest but his words are true. Many listened and pondered, others took up the fight. We set up a rotation or a growth cycle of approximately 40 years in which to grow a crop of timber. We feel that like corn which is an annual crop, we can grow a crop of trees from the seedlings to maturity or size large enough to be cut for salt timber, poles, pulpwood and other products within 40 years and then start over with a new crop and we try to keep a new crop coming in by proper methods of cutting such as leaving seed trees when we make the rotation cut at the end of 40 years. Yes, this is a big industry. Measure it in money or tons of paper or a number of men employed and it always adds up to the same thing, a new source of riches for the south. Go back a generation, 20 years, even a decade and these pine covered hills would have been looked on as wasteland. Ignored by the early planters, these hills now yield up a wealth that cotton could never bring. There was a pleasant day I spent with Mr. G.T. Skinner, tree farmer on the banks of the Black River. Mr. Skinner owns some 2,000 acres of woodland. One speaks reluctantly of his holdings of course but with a brashness born of my newspaper days. I asked him an embarrassing question. I asked him about his land and the value thereof. I have about 20 acres cleared and past us and about 2 acres of that 20 and a fish pond and we have lots of bazelias and flowers and everything that you can think of in that 20 acres there. And all the rest of your land is in trees? All the rest of the land is tumbled down. I wonder, Mr. Skinner, and here I don't want to embarrass you in any way, but I wonder if you could give us in some terms of your own indication and idea of the value of tree farming. Well, it's a long story. I started out as a young man holding his property, kept it for years. And we have come to the conclusion that now we can live. From that time we'll take out six, seven, maybe $8,000 a year. But like most revolutions, the impact has been greatest on those who do not own the land but earn their livelihood by selling their labor. This town here, Georgetown, South Carolina, what was it like before the mill moved in a few miles down the stream? What are the changes that have come? I brought this question to one who had been here before the mill, one who remembered the past even as he planned for the future. Mr. Donald Freeman Banker, what changes has the mill brought to this town? I think it has. The impact has been tremendous. I see it by the people on the street, the numbers of people on the street, the clothing that they're wearing, the automobiles that they're driving, the houses in which they're living, and the life that they're living, the society of the community. Now Mr. Freeman, we've established that there has been an improvement in the standard of living in the South generally and specifically here in Georgetown, South Carolina. I wonder if you could give us some figure which would tell us what that improvement in the standard of living has been and perhaps in terms of bank deposits? Well, in terms of bank deposits, 15 years ago in Georgetown they had no bank. So we start from nothing? That's correct. They had a cash depository which was a state license to take deposits and honor checks drawn against these deposits and to make certain small loans on government securities. But there was no bank in the city of Georgetown. And what is the bank doing now? The bank today is enjoying a tremendous business. And I might say that I think in the last 12 years the deposits in that bank have more than doubled. And there are loans about three or four times what they were 12 years ago. 18 years ago it was almost resembled a ghost town. I spent one Sunday afternoon here and went in the drugstore. And I think that the party with me and I were the only ones in that drugstore. The parking spaces everywhere. Georgetown had had the largest lumber mill in the world, the old Atlantic coast lumber. And that was in the processes of liquidation. I wonder how you would compare today the life of Georgetown to that life 18 years ago? Well, the comparison would be terrific. We would hardly realize it were in the same community. The buildings on Front Street, many of the faces have been improved. And when you get off of Front Street you can see it in new houses, new construction. I would say that in the past 15 years some 600 or 800 new houses have been constructed within two miles of our town clock. Call the role of the states and the story is the same. Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Florida. Talk to the men who cut the timber in the lowlands of Mississippi and Arkansas. The accent is a little different but the words are the same. Timber has become big business. Naval stores, pulp, paper for boxes, giant rolls that would stretch across a continent and back. One final voice and echo from the past. It was in the winter of 1889. The war between the states had ended just 24 years before. The bitter days of the reconstruction were at their worst. Henry W. Grady, managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution, was speaking of a funeral he had attended a few days before in Pickens County, Georgia. They cut through the solid marble to make his grave. And yet a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him in the heart of a pine forest. And yet the pine coffin was imported from Cincinnati. They buried him within touch of an iron mine. And yet the nails in his coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were imported from Pittsburgh. They buried him by the side of the best sheep grazing country on the earth. And yet the wool in the coffin bands and the coffin bands themselves were brought from the north. They buried him in a New York coat and a Boston pair of shoes and a pair of bridges from Chicago and a shirt from Cincinnati. The south didn't furnish a thing on earth for that funeral for the corpse and the hole in the ground. The corpse and the grave. It was a bitter symbol, a cry of anguish. Many years would have passed before that cry could be answered. It's too bad the gracious old editor can't return to this land that he loved so well and mark the change. Well, I can't see anything in the world, but bright future. Everybody owns their own property, practically. And we have so many people who have homes that never dreamed of having home before. And the outlook on business is good. I think that just a matter of time before we'll have another industry when we get one on the hook right now. In the old days we were pretty dependent on north manufactured products. But in the last ten years or so, the change has been tremendous. New plants, new factories. This lumber mill right here is just one of the many. We used to dream about the past down here and wonder if its glories would ever return. You don't hear so much of that now. The things of the past, well we always remember of course and cherish. But now for the first time we feel that the future too belongs to us. You have been listening to Heritage over the Land. The third in a series of programs on the new developments in the south. This series is written and directed by William Allen Bales, produced by Miss Lee F. Payton. Next week at this time the story of a migration. The movement of the textile industry from New England to the south. It is planned that a future series will deal with significant developments in other sections of the United States.