Iraq's vast marshes, reborn after Saddam, are in peril again

Iraq's vast marshes, reborn after Saddam, are in peril again
Thu Oct 26, 2017 10:12:27

Iraq's southern marshlands are a world apart from the rest of the arid Middle East, with tunnels of towering reeds, floating villages and half-submerged water buffaloes - a lush remnant of the cradle of civilization.

(AP) -- Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, they were reborn after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein when residents dismantled dams he had built a decade earlier to drain the area.

But now they are imperiled again, this time by government mismanagement and electrical dams and irrigation projects upstream that have reduced the flow of freshwater, allowing saltwater from the Persian Gulf to seep in.

Farming and sewage runoff have depleted fishing stocks, forcing some fishermen to resort to using car batteries and chemicals.


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