Ábrahám Levente – Farkas Sándor: Butterflies along the river Drava, 2008
Legrad^fLg^ Koprivnjpa CROATIA Mrovitku NATÚR A 2000 areas in Hungary Danube-Drava National Park Sampling areas of DRAVA-INTERECO project HUNGARY fc2*í&C «* Harkány * DANUBE Tnastir DRÁVA O Osijek mm/mm* From nature conservation aspects, Dráva river is one of Central-Europe's mostvaluable rivers. Belongingto the Danube water system, it has its spring in the Italian Alps and reaches the Danube in Croatia. From its source area it makes several hundred kilometres as a clear-water, rushing river, and when it reaches the Carpathian Basin it turns intő m affluent, middle and lower reach type of river. Dráva is one of the few European rivers that have preserved their naturalness at the lower reaches as well. It is a predominantly unregulated river, f reely building and destroying its shoreline, and producinggravel and sand shoals, sidebranches and oxbows.The rivervalley crosses various types of terrain, contributingto the variability of the landscape along the river. At somé places the sanddunes of adjoining lands run right to the shoreline, but there are alsó steep loess walls dropping right down intő the rivervalley. Unique as such in entire Europe, in several places it ramifies to create complex wetland forests with dense vegetation and marshy areas, almost impermeable to humans. Its highly undisturbed nature is due to the fact that it runs alongthe state borderbetween Hungary and Croatia. Howbeautif ul this untamed land is! The preservation of natural values and landscape diversity has neverbeen as important duringthe history of mankind as it is today. The greatest challenge for nature conservation in the 21st century is the preservation of variability (diversity), because this is what serves as the basis for sustainable development. The most commonly known indicators of such variability are species diversity and the spatial diversity of habitats. Our knowledge about the complexity of sophisticated functional relationships within living communitiesisstillincompletetoday.
