Buško Lake

Buško Blato (Jezero) is an accumulation lake located on the south side of Livanjsko Polje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The name is also a reference to the area surrounding the lake which includes a number of villages, of which Prisoje is the largest. This area in inhabited primarily by Bosnian Croats of the Roman Catholic faith with a sizable Bosniak minority.

Buško mud (lake) is the natural sequel of the Livanjsko field. Its altitude is 716 meters. Only lake  size is 55,8 km2, and altogether size is 782 milions of m3. Its length is about 13,5 km, average width about 4,1 km, and maximum width is about 7,2 km. The average depth of this lake is about 15,5 meters. One third of this lake is located in Livno municipality and the rest is in Tomislavgrad municipality. With its size, this lake is one of the biggest acumulations in Europe.


One third of the area falls under the jurisdiction of the municipality of Livno while the remaining two-thirds belongs to the municipality of Tomislavgrad. The total area of Buško Blato makes it one of the largest accumulation lakes in all of Europe.


Buško Blato (blato meaning 'mud' or 'swamp' in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) was essentially farmland up until 1974 when it was officially converted into a lake (jezero meaning 'lake' in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian). It was built to drive out the population in the region and in part to have electricity for the Dalmatian coastline. The governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (republics within Yugoslavia at the time) worked together on a project to build a hydroelectric power plant in Ruda (municipality of Otok in Croatia) called Orlovac that would have an output of 237 MW and an average annual yield of 366 GWh.


The lake also consists of a rich and wide assortment of fish such as carp, trout, minnow-nase, Prussian carp, and chub.

The lake is plentful of fish, which was, unfortunately, destroyed by great oscillations in water level during the summer, dry period, with redundant emission of the water for the needs of power-station. That leads in danger the whole fish fond.