NORTH DAKOTA

Ground squirrels taking over city

MINOT — The Richardson’s ground squirrel weighs less than a pound, is about a foot long and is native to the northern Plains.

The little creature also is a ferocious tunneler, and it’s exasperating the people of Minot, North Dakota, where it’s burrowing everywhere from vacant lots to the middle of town, and growing more plentiful over the past two decades.

Now North Dakota’s fourth-largest city is fighting back, but even the pest control guy leading the charge acknowledges that it will be difficult to turn the tide against the rodent.

Joshua Herman said fighting the squirrels is akin to “one guy standing against a massive storm.”

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Ground squirrels have been an issue in Minot, a city of nearly 50,000 people, for at least 20 years, but the problem has dramatically worsened in the last few years, said Minot Street Department Superintendent Kevin Braaten.

Greg Gullickson, an outreach biologist with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, says that the squirrels now have fewer grassland areas available to them and like the mowed spots they find in town.

Female squirrels typically give birth to litters of about six babies a year, so it’s easy to see how their numbers can quickly soar.

Herman said he kills 3,500 to 5,000 of them a year, primarily by putting snares and carbon monoxide into the holes, and using an air rifle.

Herman says they damage driveways, sidewalks and lawns; create tripping hazards with their holes and can harbor disease from fleas.

Still, not everyone sees the squirrels as a pest. Some find the critters cute and fuzzy.

Herman said people have sabotaged, stolen or thrown out his traps. They occasionally confront him when he shoots at ground squirrels with an air rifle, scolding him for hurting the wildlife, he said.

B-52 crew wasn’t warned about airliner

BISMARCK — Air traffic controllers at a small North Dakota airport didn’t inform an Air Force bomber’s crew that a commercial airliner was flying in the same area, the military said, shedding light on the nation’s latest air safety scare.

A SkyWest pilot performed a sharp turn, startling passengers, to avoid colliding with the B-52 bomber he said was in his flight path as he prepared to land on July 18 at Minot International Airport.

The bomber had been conducting a flyover at the North Dakota State Fair in Minot approved in consultation with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Minot International Airport air traffic control and the Minot Air Force Base’s air traffic control team, the Air Force said in a statement.

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As the bomber headed to the fairgrounds shortly before 8 p.m., the base’s air traffic control advised its crew to contact the Minot airport’s air traffic control.

Video taken by a passenger on Delta Flight 3788 — which departed from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport — captured audio of the SkyWest pilot explaining over the plane’s intercom that he made the hard bank after spotting the bomber in the flight path that Minot air traffic control had directed him to take for landing.

The airliner had 76 passengers and four crew members onboard, SkyWest Airlines said.

The FAA said that a private company services the Minot air traffic control tower, and that the controllers there aren’t FAA employees. It is one of 265 airport towers nationwide that are operated by companies, but the roughly 1,400 air traffic controllers at these smaller airports meet the same qualification and training requirements as FAA controllers at larger airports, the agency said.

NEBRASKA

Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern seek merger

OMAHA — Union Pacific wants to buy Norfolk Southern in a $85 billion deal that would create the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S, potentially triggering a final wave of rail mergers across the country.

The proposed merger, announced on July 29, would marry Union Pacific’s vast rail network in the West with Norfolk’s rails that snake across the Eastern United States. The combined railroad would include more than 50,000 miles of track in 43 states with connections to major ports on both coasts.

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The nation was first linked by rail in 1869, when a golden railroad spike was driven in Utah to symbolize the connection of East and West Coasts. Yet no single entity has controlled that coast-to-coast passage.

The railroads argue a merger would streamline deliveries of raw materials and goods nationwide by eliminating delays when shipments are handed off between railroads.

Any deal would be closely scrutinized by antitrust regulators that have set a very high bar for railroad deals after previous consolidation in the industry led to massive backups and snarled traffic.

U.S. railroads have already undergone extensive consolidation since the industry was deregulated. There were more than 30 major freight railroads in the early 1980s. Today, there are only six major, or Class 1, railroads.

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern said they hope to get approval for the deal by early 2027. They expect to eliminate $1 billion in costs annually, and Vena said no union members should lose their jobs but the workforce could still shrink through attrition. Revenue is also expected to jump.

MONTANA

Crashed plane found using smart watch

WEST YELLOWSTONE — Search teams located the site of an airplane crash that killed three people near Yellowstone National Park using the last known location of the smart watch from one of the victims, authorities said on July 21.

The single-engine Piper PA-28 aircraft left Montana’s West Yellowstone Airport just before midnight on July 17, according to records released by the Federal Aviation Administration.

When the aircraft could not be located, two search planes were dispatched to look for it in the vicinity of the last known location of the watch, the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office said.

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The search planes found the downed aircraft about a half-hour later in dense timber just south of the town of West Yellowstone. All three occupants were deceased.

The victims were identified by the sheriff’s office as Robert Conover, 60, of Tennessee; Madison Conover, 23, also of Tennessee; and Kurt Enoch Robey, 55, of Utah.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. It was under investigation by the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board.

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