Science Snippets: Lethal Impacts from Nonindigenous Worm

Draft script:

When I was 12 years old, I attended the sixth-grade forestry tour. This was considered normal behavior for people in the sixth grade in Weippe, a village in northern Idaho. The tour included hosts from the many forest-extraction based businesses in the area.

One event stood out for me. A forester taught survival skills, including how to prevent hunger. Among the many organisms he had us eat were ants and worms. It was disgusting to everyone except 12-year-old kids. I munched away, as if this was normal activity. In fact, it was normal behavior for villagers in this area at this time.

Some 43 years later, I’m a bit more selective about what I eat. This is a good idea, considering an article in The Cool Down I discovered shortly after it was published on 6 September 2025. The article is titled Officials issue warning amid concerning spread of toxic ‘hammerhead worm’: ‘Don’t squish or cut them’. According to the subhead, “That’s how they multiply.”

I won’t be eating, squishing, or cutting worms in the near future. According to the article in The Cool Down, this “destructive invasive pest has been migrating north along the East Coast [of the US].” The Cool Down is quoting an article published by CBS News on 12 August 2025.

The article published by CBS News in Maine indicates that the worms “earn their name from their heads that are reminiscent of a hammerhead shark. They are native to southeast Asia but have been in the U.S. since 1891, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hammerhead worms are mostly found in the Southeast but have been moving up the East Coast.” According to the CBS News article, the worms are already in Maine, which is on the northern end of the US East Coast: “hammerhead warms have been spotted from Portland to Bar Harbor in recent years. They’ve been documented even more frequently in Massachusetts and locations further south, the map shows.” Sure enough, the map shows hammerhead worms along the US East Coast.

The fact that the hammerhead worms have occupied the US since 1891 suggests they will not be eliminated any time soon. Dealing with nonindigenous species has never been a high priority for government officials in the country of my birth. I doubt the government starts spending money to eliminate nonindigenous species such as the hammerhead worm any time soon. Were there serious money in managing or eliminating this species, along with many other nonindigenous species, the federal government would make their elimination a top priority. The current presidential administration is interested primarily in further enriching wealthy people, including the President. As a result, attending to nonindigenous species is near the bottom of the list of priorities. Managing or eliminating the hammerhead worm will become a high priority only when the worm threatens the lives or the livelihoods of millionaires.

Nonindigenous species are surprisingly expensive. A peer-reviewed, open-access paper in Science of the Total Environment published on 1 February 2022 addresses this issue. Titled Economic costs of biological invasions in the United States, the paper was created by eight scholars. It begins with Highlights explained with five bullet points: (1) From 1960 to 2020 reported costs of US biological invasions were at least $1.22 tril[ion]; (2) Annual invasion costs increased from $2 bil[lion] in 1960-1969 to $21 bil[lion] in 2010-[20]20; (3) Most costs were damages ($896 bil[lion]), with lower management investments ($47 bil[lion]; (4) Agriculture sector ($510 bil[lion]) and terrestrial habitat ($644 bil[lion]) were impacted most; and (5) Knowledge gaps in reporting make these monetary costs severely underestimated.”

The Highlights are followed by an Abstract. It is quite depressing as it relays information about the economic costs of nonindigenous species: “The United States has thousands of invasive species, representing a sizable, but unknown burden to the national economy. Given the potential economic repercussions of invasive species, quantifying these costs is of paramount importance both for national economies and invasion management. Here, we used a novel global database of invasion costs … to quantify the overall costs of invasive species in the United States across spatiotemporal, taxonomic, and socioeconomic scales. From 1960 to 2020, reported invasion costs totaled $4.52 trillion (USD 2017). Considering only observed, highly reliable costs, this total cost reached $1.22 trillion with an average annual cost of $19.94 billion/year. These costs increased from $2.00 billion annually between 1960 and 1969 to $21.08 billion annually between 2010 and 2020. Most costs (73%) were related to resource damages and losses ($896.22 billion), as opposed to management expenditures ($46.54 billion). Moreover, the majority of costs were reported from invaders from terrestrial habitats ($643.51 billion, 53%) and agriculture was the most impacted sector ($509.55 billion). From a taxonomic perspective, mammals ($234.71 billion) and insects ($126.42 billion) were the taxonomic groups responsible for the greatest costs. Considering the apparent rising costs of invasions, coupled with increasing numbers of invasive species and the current lack of cost information for most known invaders, our findings provide critical information for policymakers and managers.”

I’ve no doubt these “findings provide critical information for policymakers and managers.” However, I do doubt whether anything substantive will be done. Policymakers in the country of my birth have exhibited no interest in the control of nonindigenous species. Until there are major economic advantages associated with managing nonindigenous species, I cannot imagine governments of the world will change course and begin taking these species seriously.

Imagine a world in which elected officials heed the needs and desires of the people they represent. That line sounds like the beginning of a joke. Maybe, someday, the people will be taken seriously. I will not be holding my breath.