Are you up on your worm laws?
If not, I gotcha covered.
On July 1, Minnesota’s new “jumping worm law” took effect. They are now “illegal to possess, import, purchase, sell, propagate, transport or introduce without a permit from the DNR.”
“Why would I care?” and “What the heck is a jumping worm?” are questions that probably spring to mind.
Jumping worms are earthworms native to Asia, and were first found in our state in 2006. They are considered an invasive species. Like other invasive species, they have the potential to displace native species and/or otherwise disrupt the regular workings of our natural ecosystems.
Specifically, jumping worms change soil texture, making it more erodible and less hospitable to plants.
While these noodly little menaces may be unfamiliar to most, invasive species in general are pretty well known at this point. Anglers are especially bombarded at every turn with talk of Aquatic Invasive Species. It would be safe to say the public — especially the outdoor community — has Invasive Species Fatigue.
Don’t bother doing a web search; I just made that up.
You know what I mean, though.
Invasive species messaging follows us everywhere.
It can be easy to forget what the stakes are, if we ever really knew. The best antidote to ISF, it seems, is a refresher course on invasives.
This week I reached out to Laura Van Riper, the DNR’s Terrestrial Invasive Species Program Coordinator and point person on jumping worms. She said we have many non-native species here, but only some become “invasive.”
Some reproduce prolifically, for sure. But what typically allows them to explode on the landscape (or underwater) is that when they come to a new environment, they don’t face the same diseases, predators, or other factors that would otherwise keep them in check.
Once they get a foothold, they’re hard to stop.
Van Riper told me we don’t know how jumping worms got here, and we almost never know when or how they end up in new places. And since they’re hidden underground, it’s difficult to know exactly where they are.
Sounds like eradication is basically out of the question.
That’s why the prevention of new jumping worm hotspots is now, and will probably always be, the objective.
Much like the approach to aquatic invasives. As Van Riper put it, “With invasive species, as with health, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you’re cleaning off your equipment before you go place to place, you’re not moving invasive species with you to a new spot. A lot of these basic prevention actions that apply to multiple species can do a lot of good.”
Where it comes to worms, prevention advice obviously applies to gardeners, who are most likely to transport soil contaminated with jumping worms or their cocoons.
Anglers are not off the hook, however, and shouldn’t play fast and loose with worm stock, which can also be contaminated (Van Riper reminded me that no earthworms are native to Minnesota, and should never be released).
When prevention of invasives fails, we turn to control or eradication.
“The next stage is early detection and rapid response. So, if something is found, say a plant, controlling that plant early is much more cost effective. And the next stage is management of more widespread species,” said Van Riper.
That’s where we find ourselves now with many invasive plants. She said landowners and land managers can be successful at controlling and even eliminating localized infestations, so it’s worth trying.
Across the country, there is now a movement to eat invasive species, especially invasive carp. Considering the size of the problem, it seems drawing attention to the issue is a more likely outcome than actually making a dent in the population.
A colleague asked me earlier this year if I would consider writing about this movement. He knows I’m an avid forager and that there are several plants that can be eaten.
My answer to him was basically “no.”
I used the example of garlic mustard to explain.
There is a lot of springtime chatter in social media groups about eating garlic mustard, a ruinous woodland plant. It may be palatable, but that’s the extent of its positive qualities.
It forms monoculture stands that crowd out native plants, and eliminates the biodiversity that healthy ecosystems need. Much like buckthorn and non-native bush honeysuckles do, if you’ve seen the biological wastelands they create.
Garlic mustard blooms and sets seed quickly. It seems to me that unless collecting it on the shoulder of the road, foragers are apt to drop seeds as they traverse the woods.
Furthermore, those seeds are small enough to hitchhike in the mud on your boots. Spreading and creating new infestations is a distinct possibility.
Van Riper agreed with my risk assessment, and that a relative handful of foragers don’t have a reasonable expectation of controlling it.
“I think the scale matters. For some of the more widespread species in the state, it’s unlikely that there will be enough people interested in harvesting to knock it down. I’m thinking of garlic mustard, specifically,” she said.
The same goes for wild parsnip, I’m sure, which seemed to bloom in every ditch in Blue Earth County this June. All the foragers in Minnesota wouldn’t have a prayer at digging that up.
Some say wild parsnip root tastes good, but the problem of scale does throw serious doubt on foraging as a viable solution.
Beside that, the risk to human health (chemical burns from a compound in the above-ground parts) should make a person think twice about touching it.
Mowing, spraying and other methods are employed to keep it under control, though sometimes it doesn’t look that way.
Clearly, we’d be better off if things like wild parsnip had never gotten here in the first place. It makes a person wonder what else might be coming.
Which brings us back to prevention. As outdoors people, we’re on the front line when it comes to invasive species. Whether suffering from ISF or not, we bear a lot of responsibility not to make problems worse.
Every time AIS is introduced to a new lake, or a noxious weed is brought to a new space, it’s potentially a ecological disaster only beginning to unfold.
If responsibility doesn’t compel, however, I propose thinking about it another way: we outdoors people have the most to lose when natural environments are disrupted.
Before she hung up, Van Riper mentioned a national campaign aimed at preventing invasive species, and offered other helpful tidbits.
“People can follow this PlayCleanGo idea, and keep their equipment clean as they go from place to place, to reduce the spread of things like weed seeds and earthworms. Throw unwanted bait in the trash. And if they think they have jumping worms, check out our web page and we can help with identification.”
Hopefully we’re all on the same page and can rise to meet the challenge.
I, for one, am tired of learning new laws.
Roy Heilman is an outdoorsman, writer, musician, and ethnic Minnesotan. Learn about non-invasive foods to forage on his website, neveragoosechase.com.