SAVING THE GIANT PALOUSE EARTHWORM

Once declared by Aristotle to be “the intestines of the earth,” earthworms have been recognized for centuries as essential to the health of our planet’s soil. But one of the most interesting earthworms of all — the giant Palouse earthworm, native to the Palouse prairie grassland — is literally being ousted from its home turf by modern agriculture and other human activities. Though this unique ecosystem once teemed with underground life, today a baffling 99.99 percent of the Palouse prarie has been dug up, disturbed, eroded, and polluted by farming, development, and pesticides. Numerous species dependent on the prarie have experienced dramatic population declines, and many plants are thought to have disappeared from the region altogether.

To ensure that the giant Palouse earthworm doesn’t fall to the same fate, the Center and our allies have been working to protect it under the Endangered Species Act. In 2006, a coalition of individuals and conservation groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the species as endangered, but the Service failed to respond until October 2007, after the petitioning groups — joined and led by the Center — filed a notice of intent to sue. The Service then declared that the petition presented too little information to justify listing, even though the agency had originally told one petitioner it contained more data on the earthworm than did any other source.

Determined to save this species from extinction, the Center has been piloting legal efforts to overturn the Service’s faulty decision, and in January 2008 we and our allies sued the agency. With Endangered Species Act protection, this rare, fascinating invertebrate can still be saved from disappearing altogether.