These college interns are searching for an invasive species.

"It's a lot of fun getting out, crawling through the woods."

Earthworms have invaded our northern forests and are rapidly changing the soils and vegetation.

"We're studying them because they destroy the organic layer of soils so it doesn't do well for the forest."

Mark Horlocker is advising the intern work crew.

He knows the worms don't belong and is guiding the students to help slow the spread of the invasives.

"We're looking for change. We're looking for vegetation change, we're looking for soil change and we're just looking for a change in the population and the different distribution of different worm species."

In order to study the worms students first need to get at the critters. They have a plan.

"We're just putting this mustard powder into one gallon of water, you want to shake it up and what it does is it irritates the skin of the worm so they come up to the surface where we can get them."

The researchers then dump the mustard brew into a measured plot and wait ... "Oh there's a huge one!" ... and out come the earthworms.

"Holy cow! That's the biggest one I've seen today! Me too!"

The worms are collected, identified, cataloged, and the data is used to monitor the impacts of the exotics.

"This is a citizen science project; this is something that anyone can do."

That's right! By following the procedures outlined by the Great Lakes Worm

Watch program, regular people can help fight the spread of invasive species.

Mark says even the worm shy can help.

"They don't have to pull worms out of the ground, they can simply go to an area and look for worm casts or little worm holes and report that to them and that's good so it gets people involved in something that they may find a lot more interesting than they would at first glance."

And glancing at the bounty the interns collected there is a lot of worm work that needs to be done.

In the wilds of Duluth I'm David Hoole for nature matters.

The great lakes worm watch has a website devoted to worm research and awareness.

They are interested in volunteer monitors to help collect data.