Gleeful Thursday. Ready or not, here comes the sun.
Turns out that the question wasn’t quite as dumb as it surely must have sounded to the guy who answered the phone Tuesday afternoon at the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service.
Does the state still pay a bounty for Bradford pear trees?
“Uh … excuse me?,” said the unfortunate soul acting as receptionist in the Forsyth County extension service office.
You know, like a most wanted list? But for trees?
The man paused for a second, probably resisting an urge to refer the caller to a substance-abuse hotline and agreed that it sounded familiar, come to think of it. “Let me have you talk to an agent,” he said.
The extension service did in fact run such a program last year along with the N.C. Forest Service, the Urban Forest Council and the N.C. Wildlife Federation.
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And plant experts paid by the state agree that the Bradford pear is a menace even beyond its godawful rotting fish stink, brittle branches and nasty thorns.
They labeled the Bradford pear an “invasive species” — the flora and fauna equivalent of the Most Wanted List — and actively encouraged North Carolina residents to do their best young George Washington impersonation by taking an ax (or chainsaw) to them.
There is a catch, though.
The state doesn’t pay cash for pear tree carcasses; the bounty, at least in 2023, came in the form of a native sapling as a replacement.
“The forest service ran it last year,” said extension agent Taylor Darnell. “It’s still going on, but it looks more sporadic this year.”
That’s too bad.
It didn’t take much coaxing to get Darnell to explain why the Braford pear, while pleasing to the eye, is indeed a nuisance.
It was originally introduced as an ornamental species meant to beautify property but quickly proved to be hazardous.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture started importing Bradford pears — Pyrus calleryana or Callery pear — from Southeast Asia in the 1960s because they were cheap and grew quickly. Lady Bird Johnson promoted their use in Washington D.C.
“They were brought into the South either by the University of Georgia or Clemson. One of the land grant schools,” he said. “Originally, it was supposed to be sterile, but we found out that it cross-pollinated with native trees and started to displace them in the third or fourth generation.”
To you, me and anyone else who doesn’t have a degree in agricultural science, that can mean birds have fewer sources of nutrition. Avian food deserts that damage the delicate balance of natural ecosystems.
Adding to the ick factor, Bradford pears — Pyrus calleryana or Callery pear — tend to attract flies rather than bees.
“(Bradford pears) are like English Ivy and Japanese honeysuckle which also displaces native species,” Darnell said.
Put another far creepier way, the Bradford pear’s effect is akin to pythons turned loose in Florida’s Everglades. A bounty program is one way to try and combat the spread of nonnative invasive species.
So if your nose just can’t take the annual olfactory assault anymore, fire up the chainsaw and have at the Bradford pear.
Just remember to take photos if a local office still participates in replacement bounty programs. At least, you don’t have to haul the carcasses in for proof of demise.
Interested? Check www.treebounty.com for details.
Gambling off to a flying start
That ringing noise in your ears is the sound of cash registers lighting up at the N.C. State Lottery Commission as the state rakes in dough generated by legal sports betting.
Preliminary figures presented Wednesday to the commission show that some $24.9 million was wagered on computers and smartphone apps in the first 24 hours after they went live March 11.
Some $12.4 million came via promotional wagers incentives offered to new customers to reel in new gamblers once they opened accounts and placed that first bet.
And through just the first week, more than $198.1 million had been wagered with $141.6 million in bet winnings paid. “Gross wagering revenue,” which per the Associated Press is the base level where the state collects its 18 percent, approached $42.7 million.
In the first week.
State lottery officials appointed by the Legislature to regulate online sports gambling when it legalized the practice last year attributed the fast start in part to novelty and partly to the fact that the rollout came near the start of the NCAA basketball tournament.
While that’s surely one factor, it’d be wise not to underestimate the appetite for gambling in general.
There’s a reason Virginia has allowed most of the casinos now in operation to set up shop right on top of the state line.
Don’t bet against the Legislature seeing it way clear to approving casino gambling as soon as this year. The numbers from the first week of sports betting will be hard to ignore.