Jane Ferguson:

The marshes of Southern Iraq are suffering from low water levels, down 17 inches, and it's a part of the widespread water crisis spanning the entire country.

Water levels in the life-giving Tigris and Euphrates rivers have plummeted. The problem is that the water isn't just low. It's also too salty. According to Al-Asadi, the reduced volume of water has caused salination to spike from 200 parts per million, as it was when he was a child here, to 1,800 parts per million today.

That means the water is not only killing the plant life, but also the water buffalo people here depend on. These cows provide cheese, milk, and meat to eat. For thousands of years, they simply drank the water all around them, but now it has become too salty and toxic for the buffalo, blinding them before they die.

We met buffalo herder Abbas Jawad collecting water from one of the remaining few healthy parts of the marsh. From here, he will carry the water miles to his herd. He has lost 15 buffalo in the last year to the salty water.