Iraq's Marshlands Recovering Rapidly As Water Returns - MSNBC

[hatrack]

TOKYO - A decade after Saddam Hussein had them drained to punish their occupants, the marshlands of southern Iraq, said to be the inspiration for the biblical Garden of Eden, are recovering at a “phenomenal rate” since Saddam's fall, the United Nations said Wednesday.

New satellite imagery shows a rapid increase in water and vegetation cover in just the past three years, with the marshes rebounding to about 37 percent of the area they covered in 1970, up from about 10 percent in 2002, the United Nations Environment Program said in a report describing a multimillion dollar restoration project funded by Japan.

“The evidence of their rapid revival is a positive signal, not only for the environment and the local communities who live there, but must be seen as a contribution to wider peace and security for the Iraqi people and the region as a whole,” UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement.

EDIT

Of almost 3,600 square miles of marshes in 1970, the area shrank by 90 percent to 304 square miles by 2002. As recently as 2001, some experts forecast the marshlands would disappear by 2008. But restoration efforts since the fall of Saddam reversed much of the damage, bringing the current area to 1,400 square miles. The expanse swelled to 50 percent of the 1970 range in the spring but then dwindled due to summer evaporation. Iraqi engineers and tribes began re-flooding parts of the wetlands by cutting gashes in dikes in the euphoria of Saddam’s ouster in 2003."

EDIT

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9063147/

[ret5hd]

1. i would say this is propaganda of the laziest kind...

i would have to do more research to be sure, but...

on the face of it it seems as if they are trying to give credit to the ouster of saddam for ecological restoration...when all it really is is busting up a bunch of dikes.

[patdem]

2. We just found the silver lining..and it was done by Japan..the old enemy

people like to refer to when spouting about why we should invade Iraq. I call that ironic!

[thereismore]

3. Voila. We have a new reason for invading Iraq: marshland restoration! nt

[phantom power]

4. The "Marsh/Oil" Plan?

[hatrack]

5. Bah-da-BOOM

:toast: