You Can Stop Jumping Worms Before They Establish in Our Forests
Jumping worms are one of the few invasive species we can actually stop from spreading—but we must act fast. They only move when humans move soil, mulch, or plants, which means simple biosecurity actions can prevent their establishment. The window to act is small: if we delay, these worms are poised to remodel Canadian forests and green spaces.
How You Can Stop Them
1. Raise Awareness
Make jumping worms a prohibited species locally and nationally.
Educate friends, neighbours, and community groups about the risk they pose.
Never use Jumping Worms as bait. Inform anglers of the danger and the need to bag and dispose.
Encourage reporting of sightings to platforms like iNaturalist—citizen science helps track infestations.
History shows that once an invasive species is finally regulated in Ontario (like Phragmites or Zebra Mussels), the cost of management is 25 times higher than if it had been addressed during the "emerging" phase.
2. Keep Soil and Gear Clean
Always wear clean footwear when entering forests, parks, or green spaces.
Use boot brush stations at trailheads and parking lots—and normalize carrying a portable brush in your gear.
Clean tools, equipment, and vehicles after contact with soil or compost.
Construction contractors can easily stop the spread of jumping worms by minimizing off-site soil movement, requiring documentation of soil origin, mandating heat treatment of off-site soil, mulch, and compost, limiting soil thickness, and cleaning equipment between sites. These steps are easy to monitor and can be enforced through permits and contracts, just like erosion and invasive plant controls. Because jumping worms spread through construction soil practices cause lasting forest damage, compliance is essential to protect future forests.
3. Use Only Treated Soil
Landscapers, gardeners, and construction crews must use heat-treated soil only. This is solution is not actually a huge challenge.
We can take advantage of hot summers to solarize soil—simply cover it with clear plastic for several weeks to destroy cocoons. lethal limit is 104∘F (40∘C) for 72 hours.
Open paved areas with simple on-site biosecurity provisions can accomodate large amounts of soil tarped and heat-treated, an almost zero-cost solarization treatment and something that could supply the construction industry with required adherence to soil treatment protocols.
The green roof industry has also highlighted the immense unused potential of industrial rooftops, particularly Canadian "concrete deck" roofs designed for heavy snow loads that can easily be purposed as high-efficiency solarization units during the summer. Besides structural capacity, these rooftops provide the ideal thermal mass and solar exposure to rapidly pasteurize soil. A rooftop environment provides two major advantages: higher ambient air temperatures and lack of ground-sink cooling (where heat bleeds into the cooler earth).
Always avoid moving untreated soil, mulch, or compost from infested areas.
4. Advocate for Biosecurity Protocols
Municipalities, parks, and developers should require strict soil transfer protocols.
Encourage installation of boot brush stations at all trailheads, parking lots, and forest entrances.
Support regulations that prevent the sale or transport of infested soil, mulch, or potted plants.
5. Bag, Report and Dispose of Worms
If you do find jumping worms, photograph and report them to iNaturalist or a similar tracking app.
Always bag them and throw them in the garbage.
Never compost worms or infested soil—they will survive and spread.
Why Stopping Them Is Possible
Jumping worms can expand population and range but cannot move to a new location on their own—their spread is entirely human-driven.
Their cocoons cannot survive heat treatment, meaning preventive actions are effective.
With prompt action, we can contain infestations before they become widespread.
The time to act is now. Jumping worms are poised to cause long-term damage to forests, gardens, and green spaces across Canada. Every clean boot, every bagged worm, every educated neighbor counts. The day may come when science has a molecular tools like RNA interference, but the damage happening now is real. Genetic tools work best when the population is small. If we can keep the population mitigated, there is real hope we can protect our forests and green spaces from this threat. Together, by combining awareness, prohibition, and biosecurity, Canada can prevent this new invasive species from taking hold.
References
Cocoon Heat Tolerance of Pheretimoid Earthworms Amynthas tokioensis and Amynthas agrestis https://bioone.org/journals/the-american-midland-naturalist/volume-181/issue-2/0003-0031-181.2.299/Cocoon-Heat-Tolerance-of-Pheretimoid-Earthworms-Amynthas-tokioensis-and-Amynthas/10.1674/0003-0031-181.2.299.short
Tarping, Solarization and Occultation https://www.uvm.edu/extension/news/tarping-solarization-and-occultation
Heat kills invasive jumping worm cocoons, could help limit spread https://news.wisc.edu/heat-kills-invasive-jumping-worm-cocoons-could-help-limit-spread/
Best Management Practices https://vtinvasives.org/sites/default/files/images/Jumping%20worm%20BMPs%20for%20nurseries.pdf
Solarization for Pest Management in Florida https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/IN824
Soil Solarization
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279379477_Soil_Solarization
Soil solarization in various agricultural production systems
https://ucanr.edu/sites/default/files/2011-07/114655.pdf
Comparison of Asphalt and Concrete Pavement Solar Reflectance
Thermal performance of building roof elements
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360132301000774
Structural Commentaries (User's Guide for the National Building Code of Canada 2020: Part 4 of Division B) https://nrc.canada.ca/en/certifications-evaluations-standards/codes-canada/codes-canada-publications/structural-commentaries-users-guide-national-building-code-canada-2020-part-4-division-b
Value-for-Money Audit: Management of Invasive Species https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en22/ENV_ProvMgmtInvasiveSpecies_en22.pdf
