The wider area along the Mura and Drava rivers in Croatia has been protected as the Mura-Drava Regional Park since 2011, which is the first protected area in this category and extends across 5 Croatian counties (Međimurje, Varaždin, Koprivnica-Križevci, Virovitica-Podravina and Osijek-Baranja).
The Mura and Drava rivers are among the last lowland rivers in Central Europe characterized by a pre-natural flow. This area is characterized by great biodiversity, geodiversity and landscape diversity, as well as a rich cultural and traditional heritage.
Wet habitats are particularly important, and are among the most endangered habitat types in Europe, and are also protected at the national level: floodplain forests, wet grasslands, dead branches, abandoned riverbeds and meanders, sandbanks and steep, eroded banks where strictly protected bird species nest.
The former characteristics of the Drava river course in Varaždin County (intensive morphological dynamics and riverbed displacement), as well as the entire ecosystem, have today been significantly changed. The Drava River and its hydropower potential upstream of the Mura confluence have been fully exploited for electricity production, which is why a large part of the former biological and landscape values of the area have been lost.
Three hydroelectric power plants have been built on the Drava from the Slovenian border to Donja Dubrava - HE Varaždin, HE Čakovec and HE Dubrava. Therefore, in the observed area, along the old bed of the Drava River, there are also parts of three consecutive reservoirs (the reservoir lake of the Varaždin HPP, the reservoir lake of the Čakovec HPP, the reservoir lake of the Dubrava HPP), together with the accompanying supply and discharge channels. Due to the construction of the HPP system, the physiognomy of the watercourse has been significantly simplified, and the embankments of the derivation channels and reservoirs, as well as large water surfaces, have become new, prominent landscape elements.