Profile Story

Ten feet underground, there lives something thought extinct until recently. This semi-mythical creature can grow up to 3 feet in length, has a mouth without teeth that it uses to spit at attackers, comes out of its burrow late at night to graze and smells like lilies. It is known as the Driloleirus americanus, or the Giant Palouse Earthworm.
This worm lives in solidarity, without knowing that several feet above him there sits a man, hunched over a desk, fighting to save him.
Steven Paulson, of Lenore, Ida., has spent the last several years petitioning to get the Giant Palouse Earthworm on the endangered species. The process, which has of yet taken nearly five years, started with a graduate student from the University of Idaho discovered the worm in 2005 on Smoot Hill, about 10 miles south of Pullman.
Prior to this, the creature was thought to be extinct by many members of the Palouse. It was abundant at one time, but in the last 20 years or so it has become harder and harder to find. Before 2005 the last known discovery of the earthworm was in 1988 and before that it was 1970, Paulson said.
There are only a few known habitats of the Palouse Earthworm left, Paulson said. These locations are scattered throughout Pullman and Moscow, but the worm originally lived in a larger area.
"It's original habitat was the entire Palouse Prairie," Paulson said. "The official area is the Palouse bio-region. That is the scientific finding that we included in our petition to get it listed as an endangered species."
The listing process is a complicated one, said Tom Buckley, an external affairs officer at the Upper Columbia Fish and Wildlife office, a branch of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.
In this process, a concerned group, in this case it was Paulson (backed by environmental group Friends of the Clearwater, of which he is a boardmember, and the Palouse Prairie Foundation, of which he is a member), contacts Fish and Wildlife Services with a petition about the biological information about the species they are concerned about.
Fish and Wildlife then has 90 days to review this material, said Michelle Eames, a endangered species biologist at the Upper Columbia Fish and Wildlife office. The reviewing group does not do any other research, they just look over the petition and decide whether the material is substantial enough to investigate the matter further, she said.
In the case of the Giant Palouse Earthworm, the Paulson and backers threatened to sue when a decision was not released after the 90-day period.
Paulson was granted further review, but was denied "emergency listing" which would mean the group saw immediate need to move forward quickly with the evaluation, he said.
After granted evaluation, the committee at Fish and Wildlife Services moves on to a 12-month status review, in which they look at threat factors facing the endangered species, Eames said.
"There are five factors, such as elements affecting the habitat, commericial overuse of the area, disease and innadequacy of current habitat," Eames said.
There are then three conclusions that the committee can come to, Buckley said. The group can decide the species needs help, but that it is going to be put on hold because there are budget issues or species with a higher priority of saving, the warrant can go strait to a a proposal by FWS that the species be listed as endangered or threatened, or the warrant can be denied, he said.
If the proposal is listed, there are 60 days for the public to comment on their opinion of the status of the species. Informal meetings are also held in the area that the species is held in order to garner the public's opinion, Eames said.
"We have these meetings in the area around the communities where the species primarily lives because those are the people who are familiar with and concerned about the issue," Buckley said.
In the case of the Giant Palouse Earthworm, Paulson had to sue once again during this part of the process, in order to receive a response.
"We had to wait a whole year to go by, then we had to threaten to sue for their failure to issue a 12-month finding," Paulson said.
When a finding was issued, it said that the request was denied because of something that was "erroneous," he said. In the petition it listed that the Giant Palouse Earthworm lived in the Palouse bio-region, but that it had also been found once in Ellensburg, Wash., outside of this bio-region. The FWS said that because this information was incorrect, the entire petition was erroneous as well, Paulson said.
"They said that because the assumption of the habitat, which was described in scientific literature, was wrong, that the petition didn't have merit," Paulson said.
The earthworm advocates took this to court again, to challenge the decision, this last February.
The judge found in favor of FWS, saying that they had the right to decide what should be listed on the endangered species list, Paulson said.
Paulson has since spent all his free time rewriting the petition in order to try again, he said.
"Getting any species on the endangered species list is a tremendously expensive and time-consuming project," he said.
The first petition took him nearly a year and a half to complete, and he said the rewrite will take him nearly as long, as the process of getting an animal considered is dificult, "especially under the Bush and Reagan administrations," he said.
So far, President Obama has only made small changes to policy, but more may be in store, Buckley said.
Still, as he prepares to embark on a multi-year battle in order to save a creature he has never actually scene, Paulson remains dedicated to his cause.
"It is important to our area," he said.