By Samiha Shafy It was this promise that prompted Alwash to
return to Iraq and raise funds for his plan, which involved the
controlled flooding of former marshland. He and his
collaborators called their ambitious plan the "Eden Again"
project. Curtis Richardson, an ecologist at Duke University in
Durham, North Carolina, was part of the project from the very
beginning, making research trips to the region between 2003 and
2007. "I've studied wetlands for my entire professional life,"
says Richardson, "but this marshland is the Holy Grail -- the
Garden of Eden." Soon, however, Richardson was forced to realize
how naïve his enthusiasm had been. He spent many a sleepless
night on the floor of his hotel room in Basra listening to the
sound of gunshots outside. Heavily armed guards had to escort
him during his field work. "You do feel a little strange when
you're holding a pH monitor in your hand while everyone else is
carrying a machine gun," he says. Once, when Richardson went
into the water near the Iranian borde