A luxury resort backed by the US president’s family may be built on a wildlife-rich nature reserve in one of Europe’s poorest nations
Domestic anger at the government’s corruption and global interest in the business dealings of the US president’s family have inflamed the unrest. But at its heart, the fight is driven by the same tension between environmental protection and short-term economic growth that is playing out across Europe.
The area’s status as a wildlife sanctuary was “something that amid all of this probably gets forgotten, but it’s what sparked the big outrage”, said Aleksandër Trajçe, the executive director of PPNEA, Albania’s largest conservation group. “If you want to see the Mediterranean as it used to be, before it was wrecked by tourism, this is one of the last – if not the last – spots where you would find it.”
Marshes, dunes, lagoons and salt pans stretch across the dynamic delta of the free-flowing Vjosa River, which was declared Europe’s first wild river national park in 2023. It sits on a major migratory corridor, hosting about 12% of the country’s wintering waterbirds, and is home to Eurasian otters, loggerhead sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins and Albanian water frogs. Flamingos add bright shocks of pink to striking blue shallows.
Unpublished conservation data shared with the Guardian shows 279 of the 2,529 species in the delta are internationally threatened. Aleko Miho, a biologist at the University of Tirana, who monitors the area with his students each year, said: “These are important habitats. It doesn’t matter who is behind it. What matters is the pressure it puts on a protected area.”
Machines have been seen in the Pishë Poro–Nartë protected area – which sits within the Vjosa-Narta protected landscape inside the delta – but it is unclear how much of the ecosystem would be affected by the proposed development.
The project has not received planning permission or an environmental impact assessment, and the Albanian government, which has welcomed the scheme, said the continuing works were for technical surveys and environmental measurements rather than construction.
“In the meantime, the bulldozers are really progressing,” said Trajçe. “They’re destroying the dunes. They’re opening new roads. The area has been fenced off … it’s really a wild west situation.”
Albania is among the poorest countries in Europe but boasts some of its wildest landscapes. The combination has drawn in holidaymakers seeking cheap getaways – a record 12 million tourists visited Albania in 2025 – but the government has also successfully enticed elites. In May, Ivanka Trump said she was “just captivated” when she swam up to Sazan Island and hiked barefoot to the top.
But many fear that Albania’s tourism push has led the government to disregard nature protection. It redrew the borders of the protected area in 2022 to allow the construction of Vlora airport, which had hoped to see its first commercial flight this month but is still awaiting an operating permit. In 2024 it loosened conservation laws to allow the construction of five-star hotels even in protected areas.
Albania is under pressure to tighten its environmental laws to meet the requirements of the EU, which it hopes to join by 2030. On Tuesday the European Commission said it should refrain from actions that undermine its bid and urged it to “act without delay” in complying with environmental rules. The same day, 96 civil society organisations wrote to the Albanian parliament to demand they repeal the 2024 amendment to the environmental protection law, citing the risks it posed to joining the EU.
The office of Edi Rama, the prime minister, said the fencing of private property was the lawful right of its owner and disputed having reduced the size of the protected area to build the airport.
The Vjosa-Narta ecosystem is not as unspoiled by human activity as Ivanka Trump or some protesters claim. A defunct oil-fired power plant sits beside the lagoon, while the beaches are home to dozens of guest houses, restaurants and even a music festival. However, scientists say it has been spared much of the pollution that plagues other parts of Albania’s coast, as well as the overcrowding that characterises much of the Mediterranean.
The planes, cars and construction that come with a large resort would disturb a special ecosystem that is “relatively untouched” compared with other dunes and lagoons in the Mediterranean, said Miho. “The birds will fly away, for sure.”
“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know
One thing I love about studying math is that when you ask any fellow student or prof why they went into math we all say it’s because we find it beautiful. It’s so diametrically opposed to the opinion that everyone else has about math that it feels like some kind of virus that infects you and makes you unable to study anything else
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