A huge marsh ecosystem almost the size of Florida's Everglades was deliberately destroyed by Saddam after Desert Storm. Now the "Marsh Arabs" of Iraq's south are beginning to restore those wetlands.
"Marsh Arab villages still cling to some of those roads. They look like Arab villages anywhere, including the middle of the Sahara. The only clues to their aquatic origins lie in stately council houses, with cathedral-like spires, constructed entirely of bleached, rotting reeds.Reassembling a complex ecosystem may be more challenging than they expected, but at least they've made a start. I wish them luck, and some help from a scientist or two who understands complexity."We broke the dams when the Iraqi army left," said Qasim Shalgan Lafta, 58, a former fisherman whose village sits marooned, along with a few cracked canoes, in a landscape that looks like the Utah Badlands. "We want to teach our children how to fish, how to move on the water again." . . ."
Joe,
Visit Mt. St. Helens. Mother nature will have her way, regardless of the trifling efforts of man.