Wetland Restoration a Sign of Regrowth in Iraq

A team of international scientists in southern Iraq are looking to restore a 7,000-square mile marsh ecosystem and the human economy that once depended on the land.

Nine years ago, Saddam Hussein's government built a dike across the river system that fed the marsh, systematically destroying the ecosystem, rendering families homeless, and turning the area into a vast desert wasteland. Hussein's drainage program was intended to obliterate this prime refuge for deserters from his army, many of them marsh Arabs who fought his government long before the Americans arrived. But when Hussein's government fell in April 2003, villagers went to the dike and gouged holes in it, using heavy equipment, shovels, and their bare hands. Since then, reeds and cattails have sprouted up again; fish, snails, and shrimp have returned to the waters; and egrets and storks perch on the jagged remains of the walls. Now teams of scientists financed by an array of American, Canadian, British, Italian and Iraqi agencies are trying to determine how fast and how fully this region can return to what was. The scientists reported that less than 10 percent of the original marshes still function as true wetlands, but that about 20 percent of the original area had been reflooded by March 2004, according to satellite imagery.

NY Times 3/8/2005