From Duke to the Everglades to Iraq
Curtis Richardson's Wetland Journey Sheds New Light on One
of Nature's Historically Maligned Assets p.5
Devastation and Hope
Greet Duke Ecologist in Iraqi Marshes
An expedition by Duke University wetlands expert Curtis
Richardson to evaluate damage to Iraq’s storied Mesopotamian
Marshlands revealed an environmental disaster of vast proportions.
However, he also found the potential for restoring a significant
portion of the marshes and with them the Marsh Arab culture.
On his June 16-26 trip, the Nicholas School
professor encountered dust-bowl-level desiccation within the
former wetlands, a destroyed date palm industry, a drinking
water crisis, wrecked laboratories, and a pressing need to
train a new generation of environmental researchers.
Richardson, the only university researcher
on the trip, was joined by
- Peter Reiss, an anthropologist from Development Alternatives
Inc. of Bethesda, Md., who served as team leader
- Azaam Alwash, a hydrologist and engineer with the Eden
Again Project and Iraq Foundations, and
- •Doug Pool, an agronomist with the U.S. Agency for
International Development’s (USAID) Iraq Office.
Together, they are developing with Iraqi experts a plan to
restore a portion of the marshlands, which some legends identify
as the site of the Garden of Eden. The formerly pristine wetland
ecosystem of more than 20,000 square kilometers has been reduced
by 90 percent, he estimated, through a combination of upstream
damming, protracted warfare, and deliberate draining. The
draining was done by Saddam Hussein’s government, both
for land development and to suppress an indigenous 5,000-year-old
Marsh Arab culture that opposed his regime.
For Richardson and his colleagues who made the USAID-sponsored
visit, there was potential danger starting with an early morning
armed convoy racing across the Iraqi border from Kuwait and
continuing with his first night on the third floor of his
hotel in Basra. “I was lying there hearing machine gun
fire getting closer and closer, and wondering if we would
ever get to see the marshes,” he recalled in an interview.
The group traveled hundreds of miles daily, sometimes under
the protection of U.S. military guards, occasionally under
hired local Iraqi guards in the region north of Basra. Often
unarmed, the four scientists were led by the Assisting Marsh
Arabs and Refugees (AMAR) international charitable foundation
into the small villages in marsh areas. There, they made initial
damage assessments by collecting soil and water samples, many
of which are now being analyzed at Duke’s Wetland Center.
“Saddam Hussein was a master ‘brown field generator,’”
said Richardson, referring to a term for environmental decimation.
“He churned that country upside down.”
Of the three remnant marsh areas, he found the Central Marsh
to be in the worst shape. “It’s just a complete
dust bowl,” he said. Locals had broken a Hussein-built
drainage dike in one area in an effort to return some water,
but “nothing was growing there yet,” except for
a few remaining desert plants, he added. In another recently
re-flooded area, too much salt had been drawn out of the long-dry
soils to support freshwater vegetation, and this area was
now turning into a salt-flat.
His group found the Hammar Marsh, nearest Basra, to have
some remaining lush areas where stately date palms are cultivated.
But Richardson said Hussein, in his vendetta against the Marsh
Arabs, “basically wiped out” the local date palm
industry, once the world’s largest exporter. The largest
remaining wetland areas are the Haweizeh Marshes along Iraq’s
border with Iran. That’s where Richardson and his colleagues
reached a place where locals had reintroduced their traditional
water buffalos and were seen fishing.
“We’re developing a program with the USAID where
we would help restore some of the marshes through some pilot
projects,” he said. “We know, for example, that
we would use the Haweizeh Marshes as a seed source.
“If this goes through and is approved, we’re
also going to work with some of the universities there to
bring some Iraqi scientists to Duke for some environmental
and wetland training,” he added. “Then we’re
going to do some training in Iraq.”
In the end, Richardson predicted that Iraqis “will
not be able to restore all the marshes, because they won’t
have enough water. There has been a long process of draining.
Maybe they can get 15 or 20 percent back.
“The trip gave me hope that we can make a difference
in the marshes and give some of the Marsh Arabs a chance to
return to their culture. These people, like most rural populations,
are survivors, and with a little help they will be able to
return to their rice farming, fishing and mat-making from
freshwater reeds.”
Monte Basgall is a senior writer with Duke’s
Office of News and Communications and specializes in science
coverage.
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