Ground squirrels are taking over a North Dakota city and officials are not amused

MINOT, N.D. (AP) — 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.”

“If I’m trapping but my neighbor isn’t, well then, we’re really not going to get anywhere with it, long-term,” Herman said.

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.

It's unclear how many of the squirrels live in Minot but it likely nears or even exceeds the city's population.

“Gosh, there's got to be tens of thousands of them in the area,” Herman said.

Officials in the city, a green spot along the winding Souris River surrounded by farmland and grassy prairie, know they can't get rid of the squirrels, but hope to simply get the rodent numbers down.

“I don’t see the population ever going to zero,” Braaten said. “I mean, it’s almost impossible by the numbers that we have.”

Put another way, Minot won't be able to rid itself of the squirrels because the animals have lived on the prairie for centuries. Outside of town, predators like coyotes, badgers, owls and even snakes love to dine on the squirrels. But in residential neighborhoods and even downtown, where few of their predators live, the rodents can roam pretty freely.

Greg Gullickson, an outreach biologist with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, adds 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.

“I’ve had calls downtown, calls in the mall, along the highways, here at the airport — really every part of the city I’ve done trapping for ground squirrels here in Minot,” Herman said as he checked his traps along an apartment building and shoveled dirt over holes.

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

Along an apartment building, the squirrels had dug under a concrete slab and against the foundation. Nearby in a vacant lot, the rodents popped in and out of holes.

Ground squirrels near Pashone Grandson's ground-level apartment dig holes near her door and eat her plants. One squirrel even got around her baby gate at the door and into her daughter's clothes in her bedroom.

“It was a little scary. You don't know what disease they carry. They're dirty. I have a young daughter ... I didn't know if it was going to bite her,” Grandson said.

North of town, Minot Air Force Base, which houses bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, has fought the ground squirrels for years. Earlier this month, the base said it had trapped more than 800 “dak-rats,” a base name for the rodents.

Base officials declined to comment on the squirrels.

Jared Edwards, facilities director for Minot Public Schools, which has three schools on the base, said residential areas of the base and runways are overrun by ground squirrels. He called it “a continuous battle for them for the last 75 years since the base has been there."

“I'm not going to exaggerate: They're by the millions out there,” Edwards said.

In town, three school properties have large populations of ground squirrels, he said. Last year, the school system began using snares, and for years before that had used poison.

“It's something you have to keep up with. It is Mother Nature," Edwards said, adding that they've probably been in the area since homesteaders came through.

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.

“They get that cute association, and they are, you know, adorable, but they're a vermin and a pest and dangerous when they are allowed to proliferate,” Herman said.

Joshua Herman, owner/operator of Herman Pest Control Services, poses for a photo on Monday, July 14, 2025, next to holes dug by Richardson's ground squirrels in Minot, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Snare traps set for Richardson's ground squirrels poke up from the ground along an apartment building on Monday, July 14, 2025, in Minot, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Joshua Herman pumps carbon monoxide into burrows dug by Richardson's ground squirrels along an apartment building on Monday, July 14, 2025, in Minot, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Three Richardson's ground squirrels appear Monday, July 14, 2025, in a vacant lot near apartment homes in Minot, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

A Richardson's ground squirrel pokes up from its burrow on Monday, July 14, 2025, in a vacant lot in Minot, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was at the White House on Thursday discussing her country's future with President Donald Trump even after he publicly dismissed her credibility to take over after an audacious U.S. military raid captured then-President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump has raised doubts about his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in Venezuela. His administration has signaled its willingness to work with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president and, along with others in the deposed leader’s inner circle, remains in charge of day-to-day governmental operations.

In endorsing Rodríguez so far, Trump has sidelined Machado, who has long been a face of resistance in Venezuela and sought to cultivate relationships with Trump and key administration voices like Secretary of State Marco Rubio among the American right wing in a gamble to ally herself with the U.S. government.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was expecting a positive discussion during the lunchtime meeting and called Machado “a remarkable and brave voice” for the people of Venezuela.

The White House said Machado sought the face-to-face meeting without setting expectations for what would occur. Her party is widely believed to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro. Machado previously offered to share with Trump the Nobel Peace Prize she won last year, an honor he has coveted.

Leavitt said Trump is committed to seeing Venezuela hold elections “one day,” but wouldn’t say when that might happen.

Machado plans to have a meeting at the Senate later Thursday. Trump has called her “a nice woman” while indicating they might not touch on major issues in their talks Thursday.

Her Washington swing began after U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says had ties to Venezuela. It is part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil after U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heavily guarded compound in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges.

The White House says Venezuela has been fully cooperating with the Trump administration since Maduro’s ouster.

Rodríguez, the acting president, herself has adopted a less strident position toward Trump and his “America First” policies toward the Western Hemisphere, saying she plans to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro — a move thought to have been made at the behest of the Trump administration. Venezuela released several Americans this week.

Trump, a Republican, said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was ousted.

“We had a call, a long call. We discussed a lot of things,” Trump said during an Oval Office bill signing. “And I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”

Even before indicating the willingness to work with Venezuela's interim government, Trump was quick to snub Machado. Just hours after Maduro's capture, Trump said of Machado that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”

Machado has steered a careful course to avoid offending Trump, notably after winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump wanted to win himself. She has since thanked Trump. Her offer to share the peace prize with him was rejected by the Nobel Institute.

Machado’s whereabouts have been largely unknown since she went into hiding early last year after being briefly detained in Caracas. She briefly reappeared in Oslo, Norway, in December after her daughter received the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.

The industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.

A year later, she drew the anger of Chávez and his allies again for traveling to Washington to meet President George W. Bush. A photo showing her shaking hands with Bush in the Oval Office lives in the collective memory. Chávez considered Bush an adversary.

Almost two decades later, she marshaled millions of Venezuelans to reject Chávez’s successor, Maduro, for another term in the 2024 election. But ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. Ensuing anti-government protests ended in a brutal crackdown by state security forces.

Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela, and Janetsky from Mexico City. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

FILE - U.S. President George Bush, right, meets with Maria Corina Machado, executive director of Sumate, a non-governmental organization that defends Venezuelan citizens' political rights, in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, May 31, 2005. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE - Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado gestures to supporters during a protest against President Nicolas Maduro the day before his inauguration for a third term, in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, file)