I believe we can judge the validity this report with the sentance from it "He and colleagues at four other US institutions are studying earthworm invasions with a $850,000 National Science Foundation grant." Most of what I read in it is just the opposite of what I believe.

This is an interesting article. It is no leap to realise that worms being reintroduced would change some things about the forest. I assume there were worms in this region before the last Ice Age. Then there were none, a big change. Now they are recolonizing and there are changes, some positive for certain species and some negative for other species.

Where I live, in the west, they have been changing the forest by suppressing fires. Now they are changing it by raking the duff together and burning it. That is not to mention things like building roads through the forest, grazing cattle in the forest, logging swathes of forest.

It deserves to be studied to see if there is anything irreplaceable being lost by the recolonization of worms. For sure there would be species that would benefit. I suppose there needs to be a weighing of the gains and losses and perhaps a moment of thought to what the hell we could do to change it anyway.

I checked on it and there does seem to be a problem up there. I stand corrected!