Buna River-Velipojë Protected Landscape
The Buna River-Velipojë Protected Landscape () is a protected landscape area in northwestern Albania, encompassing the estuary of Drin, the lagoon of Viluni, the river of Buna with its estuary, and the gulf of Drin that runs across the city of Velipojë alongside the Adriatic Sea. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has noted the park as Category V and has been further recognized as a wetland of international importance by designation under the Ramsar Convention. Being part of the European Green Belt, the landscape is, in addition, an Important Bird and Plant Area, because it supports extraordinary threatened and endemic bird and plant species. Stretching between the Dinaric Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, the river of Buna is an outflow of the lake of Shkodër, the largest lake in Southern and Southeastern Europe, which ultimately runs through the river until it drains into the Adriatic Sea. The landscape is an essential migration corridor at that season for hundreds of species between the Adriatic Sea and the innland. The region is explicitly marked by a relatively flat and shallow landscape supplied with alluvial forests, dry grasslands, marsh and shrublands, estuaries, freshwater wetlands and beaches. The climate of the