“Invasive species” are just words. Migration of species has always been a part of life and evolution. As criticism or concern the term needs qualifiers and descriptors.

Most of them, but some aren’t. Quoted by the Smithsonian Magazine, Melissa McCormick, ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, says: “earthworms are native to the United States, but the earthworms in some northern parts of the country (including Vermont) aren’t indigenous. Thousands of years ago, glaciers that covered North America and reached as far south as present-day Illinois, Indiana and Ohio wiped out native earthworms. Species from Europe and Asia, most likely introduced unintentionally in ship ballast or the roots of imported plants, have spread throughout North America”. However, at least 100 species of native earthworms in five families (Komarekionidae, Lumbricidae –Eisenoides and Bimastos genera–, Megascolecidae, Sparganophilidae and Lutodrilidae) continue to live in the U.S.