While men in the marshes fish, women and girls do most of the manual labor including cutting and transporting the reeds.

Inhabitants of the marshes known as the Ma dan share the floating islands where they build reed houses with domesticated water buffalo, usually a household s most valuable possession.

These are cane toads in Australia.

Insects that may affecting crops, does not prevent farmers from planting seed

Locations of the Ahwar of Southern Iraq, World Heritage Site.

Around 20,000 Marsh Arabs live in southern Iraq.

The flexible reeds are used to build arched reed houses in a design unchanged for thousands of years as well as burned for fuel.

There is a pig's head and African cane rats.

I have some nice fresh sugarcane for you.

The marshes today remain one of the poorest areas in Iraq.

A woman in Iraq s southern marshes gathering reeds.

Women gather reeds in Iraq's southern marshlands.

He lies under the lotus trees, in the covert of the reed, and the marsh.

He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.

We've got to make a run for it, back to the reeds.

The wetlands span thousands of square miles in the middle of desert.

Alwash says he feels vindicated by the UNESCO listing.

And so it was a very practical reason why it was made of cane.

But the marshes that survived for thousands of years have taken a beating in recent decades. Iraqi governments since the 1950s began draining parts of the marshes to expand agriculture and drill for oil.

The rivers will become foul. The streams of Egypt will be diminished and dried up. The reeds and flags will wither away.

And they shall turn the rivers far away and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up the reeds and flags shall wither.

Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was, marshland.

You'll notice, of course, that the puppet is made out of cane lines.

Now, you wait just one minute and I'll have some sugarcane for you.

But since Saddam was toppled in 2003, there have been efforts to restore the suffering marsh ecosystems.

There are still threats to the marshes primarily from agricultural runoff as well as drought attributed to climate change.

You'll notice that the legs are plywood legs and the canoe structure is still there.

This is a kenaf clinic. You get seed and you grow it in a plot of land, and it grows 14 feet in a month.

A few years ago, people were looking and laughing at me saying why do you want to restore the marshes?

But of course, it was the cane is light, the cane is flexible, the cane is durable and the cane is moldable.

The only thing that'll put the roses back in our cheeks is to get out of these reeds.

In the 1980s, at war with Iran, Saddam Hussein sped up their destruction so the marshes couldn't serve as a refuge for fighters.

A 7000 year old seagoing boat made from reeds and tar has been found in Kuwait.

Iraqi American environmentalist Azzam Alwash and Nature Iraq, the group he founded, have set up an eco camp in the heart of the marshes.

Some students of ancient history believe the marshes, lined with reeds, teeming with fish and filled with birds, are the site of the biblical Garden of Eden.

On June 17, the UN cultural agency, UNESCO, added the marshlands and the ancient Sumerian cities that once flourished among them to its list of World Heritage Sites.

Cuneiform texts were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed used as a stylus.

Rebuke the wild animal of the reeds, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the peoples. Being humbled, may it bring bars of silver. Scatter the nations that delight in war.

Rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the people, till every one submit himself with pieces of silver scatter thou the people that delight in war.

I use natural reed, because natural reed has a lot of tension in it that I cannot fully control.

The marshes are in one of the safer parts of Iraq, just a few hours from Basra, but there are few foreign visitors.

The rivers provided the further benefits of fish (used both for food and fertilizer), reeds, and clay (for building materials).

Can we grow skyscrapers from the bottom up the way a reed grows, by building new cells at the bottom of it and pushing itself upward?

Let's build the fire and get the engine started and go right out into the middle, away from these reeds where we can breathe.

This is a kenaf clinic. You get seed and you grow it in a plot of land, and then once and it grows 14 feet in a month.