On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 08:14:13PM +1000, harry clarke wrote:
> Although the chaos in Iraq continues, those great cycles have already
> started to repair the damage. Iraqi ornithologists have begun surveying the
> birds of the country's southern marshes, which stretched for 20,000 square
> km (7,722 square miles) until they were drained and destroyed by Saddam
> Hussein's government. Some species feared extinct have recently been seen.
A quick websearch turned up:
http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/resources/B060601.pdf
Restoring the Garden of Eden: An Ecological Assessment of the Marshes
of Iraq CURTIS J. RICHARDSON AND NAJAH A. HUSSAIN
June 2006 / Vol. 56 No. 6 BioScience 489
Abstract appended.
Andrew
The Mesopotamian marshes of southern Iraq had been all but destroyed
by Saddam Hussein's regime by the year 2000. Earlier assessments
suggested that poor water quality, the presence of toxic materials,
and high saline soil conditions in the drained marshes would prevent
their ecological restoration and doom the reestablishment of the Marsh
Arab culture of fishing and agriculture. However, the high volume of
good-quality water entering the marshes from the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers, a result of two record years of snowpack melt in Turkey and
Iran, allowed 39% of the former marshes to be reflooded by September
2005. Although reflooding does not guarantee restoration success, our
recent field surveys have found a remarkable rate of reestablishment
of native macroinvertebrates, macrophytes, fish, and birds in reflooded
marshes. However, the future availability of water for restoration is in
question, which suggests that only a portion of the former marshes may be
restored. Also, landscape connectivity between marshes is greatly reduced,
causing concern about local species extinctions and lower diversity in
isolated wetlands.
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