Not far from the Adriatic in the Split hinterland a landscape of superlatives lies hidden: The Livanjsko polje is not only the largest wetland in Bosnia but also the largest regularly flooded karst field in the world. Over centuries, in complex processes of dissolution, water has eaten into the limestone rock of the Dinaric Alps and formed a huge plain of 400 square kilometres (or roughly 155 square miles) a so-called karst polje (polje being the word for a plain or field in the Slav languages). Water flows underground into Livanjsko polje from several other plains which lie at higher elevations in the Dinaric Alps, as it were on a ladder of levels, each one roughly 150 metres higher up.

Being encircled by walls of steeply rising mountains allowed the plain to develop into a veritable carpet of brilliantly coloured but highly sensitive habitats: reed beds, fens and grassland lie close together and contain a great diversity of species. About one fifth of the Livanjsko polje is covered in old-growth forests of alder, pedunculate oak and ash in which rare predators such as the Lesser Spotted Eagle and Short-toed Snake Eagle breed. The grasslands around the Zdralovac (or Crane) fens in the north of the polje are home to the largest distribution of the Corn Crake in Southern Europe. The large expanses of water in this natural water reservoir but also its marsh vegetation and alder carrs offer resting and breeding sites for numerous waders and water birds such as Bittern and Montagu's Harrier. For Cranes and other migratory birds on the Adriatic Flyway. Livanjsko polje provides a resting place of inestimable value.