If the real estate dreams of a billionaire political family come true, an island in one of Europe\u2019s poorest countries will become a luxury hotel complex, sweeping up stretches of the wildlife-rich nature reserve that sits across the water.<\/p>\n
No public consultation has taken place, but there are signs the idea is on the way to becoming reality. Albania has been rocked by nearly two weeks of fierce protests<\/a> after fences and heavy machinery came to a sensitive wetland and preparatory work began on the tourism vision of Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n Domestic anger at the government\u2019s corruption and global interest in the business dealings of the US president\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n The area\u2019s status as a wildlife sanctuary was \u201csomething that amid all of this probably gets forgotten, but it\u2019s what sparked the big outrage\u201d, said Aleksand\u00ebr Traj\u00e7e, the executive director of PPNEA, Albania\u2019s largest conservation group. \u201cIf you want to see the Mediterranean as it used to be, before it was wrecked by tourism, this is one of the last \u2013 if not the last \u2013 spots where you would find it.\u201d<\/p>\n Marshes, dunes, lagoons and salt pans stretch across the dynamic delta of the free-flowing Vjosa River, which was declared Europe\u2019s first wild river national park<\/a> in 2023. It sits on a major migratory corridor, hosting about 12% of the country\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Unpublished conservation data shared with the Guardian shows 279 of the 2,529 species in the delta are internationally threatened.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: \u201cThese are important habitats. It doesn\u2019t matter who is behind it. What matters is the pressure it puts on a protected area.\u201d<\/p>\n Machines have been seen in the Pish\u00eb Poro\u2013Nart\u00eb protected area \u2013 which sits within the Vjosa-Narta protected landscape inside the delta \u2013 but it is unclear how much of the ecosystem would be affected by the proposed development.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the meantime, the bulldozers are really progressing,\u201d said Traj\u00e7e. \u201cThey\u2019re destroying the dunes. They\u2019re opening new roads. The area has been fenced off \u2026 it\u2019s really a wild west situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Albania is among the poorest countries in Europe but boasts some of its wildest landscapes. The combination has drawn in holidaymakers seeking cheap getaways \u2013 a record 12 million tourists visited Albania in 2025 \u2013 but the government has also successfully enticed elites. In May, Ivanka Trump<\/a> said she was \u201cjust captivated\u201d when she swam up to Sazan Island and hiked barefoot to the top.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not even a business for me, despite the scale of it,\u201d she told the podcast host David Senra about her plans to turn the area into a vast resort. \u201cIt feels like a challenge more than anything else: the culmination of all of my experience in real estate, all of my travel, a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how I think people increasingly are wanting to live, and trying to really build something that\u2019s a tangible manifestation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n