Posted on 02/24/2005 11:06:24 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
ust when things were looking up for Iraq's iconic marshlands, another threat has materialised. Iran has begun building a dyke that will threaten the water supply to the healthiest of the wetlands, the Al-Hawizeh marsh.
"It will cut off a vast amount of water and remove some of the recovering marshes," says Curtis Richardson of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who is monitoring the recovery.
Richardson told New Scientist that maintaining the Al-Hawizeh marsh, which straddles the border between Iran and Iraq, is crucial because it is a refuge for species that may recolonise other marshes.
The wetlands, which once covered 15,000 square kilometres between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, are thought to be the inspiration for the Old Testament stories of the Garden of Eden and Noah's flood. But more than 90 per cent of the area was devastated in the 1990s by agricultural irrigation and deliberate draining.
The marshes began to recover when local people restored water supplies to the drained areas by destroying dykes (New Scientist, 4 October 2003, p 6). Around 20 per cent of the drained area has now been re-flooded (Science, vol 307, p 1307), and the recovery has brought back thousands of birds as well as smooth-coated otters, he says.
But Richardson thinks water shortages further upstream and chemicals that have accumulated in the drained land mean that only around 30 per cent in total will recover.
Don't see the usual suspects getting their undies in a twist over this.
Don't see the usual suspects getting their undies in a twist over this.
And you won't. They see what's happened to their literary darling, Rushdie. They'll never criticize Iran or the mad mullahs because they don't want their own fat asses to get fatwah'd.
Heck Bush should have used "preserving the marsh" as a reason to invade Iraq. Saddam wasn't the greenest of Dictators.
Perhaps the peaceniks would have come on board, lol.
Now the Iranians are in trouble. The EPA wetlands gestapo are after them. The mullahs will soon be begging us to let them give up power.
So: Is Iran purposely building this dam to screw up the marshes or what?
Nah! You don't hear them critizing the Chicoms for the pollution they are causing. They also never critized the old Soviet Union for its environmental practices.
They are nothing but watermelons! Socialist pollution does not harm the earth, it helps it!
Would this be near Bam, Iran where the last earthquake occurred? The Bam dam?
"Black Betty (shamalam) by RamJam
Damn, hep me . . .
It's OK. We will just use our top secret Earthquake/Tsunami/Hurricane machine to take out the dam and make it look like an accident. What? ...sure we have one. I read about it over at DU.
The Iranian regime was toppled today after months of pressure from Green Peace.
You might be on to something with this.
Now, if we can just start a rumor about some type of owl that is threatened in North Korea...
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