Cindy Hale

Cindy Hale is a research scientist and environmental educator with the University of Minnesota Duluth. Cindy began her career as an ecologist in the early 1980s and has studied an eclectic variety of organisms including prairie plants, wolves and Spotted Owls but she eventually settled on forest ecology doing research in old-growth and managed hardwood forests of the Great Lakes region.

She was seduced by exotic earthworms when she realize what a big impact they were having on forest communities. The Great Lakes Worm Watch program is the result of her common interests in communicating research findings to the public and offering meaningful citizen science opportunities for those interested in exploring the Great Lakes forest ecosystems. Using her more than fifteen years of environmental education experience, Cindy has trained over 500 teachers and environmental educators in sampling and identifying earthworms and how earthworm invasions affect forest ecosystems.

She lives up the shore from Duluth, in Clover Valley, with her husband Jeff and daughter May.

Cindy's Books