Aquatic habitats
Aquatic habitats of Velebit
The Park is also home to some very rare aquatic habitats, which are of crucial importance for aquatic organisms. The most important and interesting aquatic environment in the Park is a network of streams and creeks at Štirovača, the only area in the Park with a water-impermeable ground layer, which contains the only source of drinking water and the only running water of the Park. There are several ponds (Borove vodice, Žive vodice, Lubenovačka ruja..) in the Park, either fully man-made or built around naturally occurring moist areas. Thanks to these ponds, water – a very sparse resource in Velebit, has become much more accessible to animals inhabiting the surrounding areas. As for aquatic residents in the waters of the Park, there is only a handful of fully aquatic algae, plants and very small animals, which can migrate on the bodies of birds and other animals that frequent the waters. Most of them spend only a portion of their life cycle in the water, while spending the remainder of their life on the ground or in the air, such as frogs and dragonflies, which allows them to inhabit these isolated habitats, “islands” of water in a “sea” of land of a very dry land habitat. Fish are not natural inhabitants of these tiny, isolated aquatic ecosystems, and if artificially introduced, they may significantly disturb, or even completely destroy, these delicate ecosystems.
Izvor: NP NORTHERN VELEBIT