374 Wetland Creation and Restoration Created wetland intercepting tile drainage Restored bottomland forest Figure Schematic of agricultural landscape in Mississippi River Basin with wetlands and riparian zones for controlling nitrogen pollution from agricultural fields Reprinted from Mitsch WJ and Gosselink JG (2007) Wetlands, 4th edn., 582 pp New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc Case Study – The Skjern River Restoration Project, Denmark River restoration has flourished since the early 1990s in Denmark The Skjern River in west central Jutland drains more than 11% of Jutland, and the flow of water in the Skjern is the largest in Denmark In Denmark’s largest drainage project ever, 4000 of wet meadow was converted into arable land, and the lower Skjern was straightened to a fraction of its former meandering self By the late 1980s, the river was essentially a straight line to the Ringkobing Fjord on the North Sea, eliminating thousands of hectares of marshland, meadows, and river habitat The channelized river was diked, canals were built, and pumps were installed to hasten the downstream movement of water from the land This public works project cost DDK 30 million (about US$3.6 million) and was considered a success by the agricultural community at first as grains could now be grown in the formerly wet region But the environment was paying a heavy price with this artificial river The self-cleansing ability of the river was lessened, the downstream fjord was becoming polluted with nutrients and sediments, and the land that was draining began to subside due to peat oxidation and loss of water – up to m or more in some locations A few years after the drainage, it appeared that another drainage project might be necessary, but the Danish Parliament (Folketing) passed a Public Works Act in 1998 with a huge majority that called for the restoration of the lower Skjern River and earmarked about DDK 254 million for this project The project is being implemented in three phases for three reaches of the river Nineteen kilometers of the river and 2200 of the river valley wetlands were restored over 1998–2002 (Figure 5) by putting back the meanders of the river wherever possible, removing dikes along the river to allow adjacent meadows to once again be flooded, and moving the dikes far away from the river to prevent flooding of farmland outside of the project area The project was successful in substantially increasing the biodiversity of the region with aquatic macrophytes, invertebrates, amphibians, and mammals such as otters (Pedersen et al., 2007) Case Study – Restoration of the Mesopotamian Marshlands The Mesopotamian Marshlands of southern Iraq and Iran, found at the confluence of the historic Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, were 15,000–20,000 km2 in area as recently as the early 1970s but were drained and diked, especially in the 1990s, to less than 10% of that extent by 2000 Among the main causes are upstream dams and drainage systems constructed in the 1980s and 1990s that altered the river flows and eliminated the flood pulses that sustained the wetlands Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in 2003 in Iraq, there has been a concerted effort by the Iraqis and the international community at restoring the marshlands (Richardson et al., 2005) The restoration has often occurred with local residents breaking dikes or removing impediments to flooding Remote sensing images showed that at least 37% of the wetlands were restored by 2005, and Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (Vol 3, No 8, October 2005) reported that year ‘‘at least 74 species of migratory waterfowl and many endemic birds have been sighted in a survey of Iraq’s marshlandy ’’ It was also reported that as many as 90,000 Marsh Arabs have returned to the wetlands already (Azzam Alwash, personal communication, 2006) Alwash, the Director of the Eden Again effort, has suggested that perhaps as much as 75% of the marshlands will be restored There are still several questions that remain unanswered about whether full restoration can occur, including whether adequate water supplies exist given the competition from Turkey, Syria, and Iran, and within Iraq itself, and whether landscape connectivity of the marshes can be re-established (Richardson and Hussain, 2006)