Béda-Karapancsa

Béda–Karapancsa is one of the regions of the Danube–Drava National Park.

Geography

The part of the marshy, reed‑filled, wild and beautiful aquatic environment of Karapancsa that lies in Hungary is located in the Danube Bend and the Mohács Island, in the southern border area of the villages of Kölked and Homorúd in Baranya County, along both banks of the Danube. Until 1996 the area was an independent nature‑conservation district of the national park. The region includes the water habitats that are of outstanding value in the lower section of the Danube in Hungary. The area is a water‑logged region covered with oxbow lakes, marshes, wet meadows, and reed beds formed by the river arms surrounding the Danube’s Mohács Island. In addition to the Danube floodplain of Béda–Karapancsa, the area also includes the region surrounding the fishing ponds of Karapancsa, while the Danube itself is not part of the protected area. The protected area covers 1,150 hectares, with an average elevation above sea level of 84–88 metres. The nearest city is Mohács.

Béda–Karapancsa belongs to the water habitats typical of the middle course of the Danube. Its size is significant and its flora and fauna are rich, which makes it especially important. Here lives Hungary’s largest population of black poplar (Populus nigra), and in addition, plant species that are not found elsewhere in Hungary, such as the Jereikói lousewort, the rust‑colored bellflower, the tall reed grass, or the silver linden, are native here.

Several significant plant communities occur in the area. These include, for example, the reed‑sedge floating mats: this plant community can develop in deep waters, but because of water flow and wind, it is also found in the littoral zones. Here grow the reed rush, the white dwarf rose, the yellow watercress, and the fairy veil. The gallery forests are characteristic riparian zones; in the higher areas one can find the forest communities that once dominated the high riverbanks of the Great Hungarian Plain, such as oak‑ash‑elm woods.

The characteristic plant associations:

willow-summer oak riparian forests

sedge marshes

reeds

beech-lentil rushes

Béka ditch rushes

oak-ash-silver birch woodlands

Here lives Hungary's largest black stork population. In the reeds small herons, great herons, bitterns, red cranes, and a few pairs of little crakes nest. In the gallery forests the common breeding bird is the grey heron. In autumn and spring the area is an important stopover for migrating birds.