Don't Give Worms a Bad Rap!

Earthworms are so valuable to soil that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service (formerly Soil Conservation Service) longed to have a worm mascot.  I remember one candidate called "Ernie the Worm".  So it's  no surprise to see this mascot on a table of the Knox County Association of Garden Clubs table on Earth Day 2014.  Bags of worm casting fertilizer were on sale at this table.   So let's be careful about painting their faults with too wide a brush!  (Photo by Don Comis)

Did you know that wherever glaciers covered parts of North America, there are no native worms?  So the worms present today are all exotic, introduced worms—mostly arriving when fishermen dumped their bait worms.

This fact, which I had learned when writing articles about worms for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research magazine, attracted the attention of A fellow member of my local garden club when she read it in an article in the sports section of the Sunday Columbus Dispatch (July 27, 2014).

 Dave Golowenski wrote the article ominously titled “Worms undermining the future of forests.”    He cites the fact that much of the land of the Great Lakes states were glaciated, so the hardwood, deciduous forests developed around lakes in soil that held no worms.   And, he says the worms are compacting forest soils and eliminates a spongy layer that prevents erosion and helps understory plants and new tree seedlings take root.
I had forgotten to look for outdoor writers in the Dispatch’s Sunday paper which I subscribe to.  I always look in the sports section for these writers in the Mt. Vernon (Ohio) daily newspaper.

Much of Golowenski’s information comes from the Great Lakes Worm Watch 

But his article can lead to misunderstandings.   My garden club friend thought that I should write about this to discourage fishermen at our Apple Valley Lake near Mount Vernon from dumping their worms.  I think the article is directed to not dumping bait worms when fishing in waters in forested wilderness areas and is not relevant to places like our lake in a rural suburban setting.

My experience writing about worms has taught me to be careful before damning worms which Golowenski admits that earthworms have been a boon to gardeners and compost makers.  I’d have to add that they have also been great for farmers, helping to drain soil, loosen it, condition it, and providing pathways for crop roots.

Those very pathways led to some bad press for worms, some from articles I wrote , when researchers began asking whether the wormholes also  provided  conduits for pesticides in water runoff to bypass the slow filtering of pesticides that allowed time to break the pesticides down.  (For example, see this.) At least one researcher came to regret what he called a bad rap on earthworms.

That has made me very careful about saying anything that harms the reputation of a creature so valuable to soil that the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (called the Soil Conservation Service when I worked there as a writer-editor for its now defunct magazine) yearned to have a worm as its mascot.
Golowenski says that  Worm Watch suggests that fishermen should be spreading “the dirt” about the worm threat.

But that “dirt” should be limited to fishermen in forests, not spread to farms, gardens, and homes in urban and rural non-forested or lightly forested areas.

That said, I support that limited call and “Worm Watch” offers some great ideas for citizen science projects.