Albania is in the midst of a ‘flamingo revolution’, sparked by Ivanka Trump‘s plans to turn a rural island into a luxury hotel.
Donald TrumpIvanka’s daughter is reportedly moving ahead with her plans to transform a Cold War-era military base into a luxury island resort with her husband, Jared Kushner.
Sazani is Albania’s largest island and is a designated military exclusion zone located in a strategically important location between the Strait of Otranto and the mouth of the Gulf of Vlora.
It is also home to Europe’s last wild river delta, which is home to the critically endangered Balkan lynx, Mediterranean monk seals and thousands of pink flamingos.
Kushner and Trump’s proposed project, which is backed by investors from Saudi Arabia, it would cripple the already fragile ecosystem.
Activists have clashed with the police in the country, hanging signs such as “Albania is not for sale”, “Hands off the Albanian land” and “Sazani is not a private island, it belongs to the Albanian people”.
Sign up for all the latest stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News updates newsletter or pick up Latest news signals the moment it happens.
“From start to finish there has been a total lack of transparency,” Aleksandër Trajçe, executive director of the main conservation group in the country, Protection and Conservation of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), told The Guardian.
“We haven’t seen any public consultation or public documentation about the permits, and now what we’re saying is, if they remove the bulldozers, remove the fence and restore the habitats to what they were, then we can start talking.
It is also a moment of reckoning for the Albanian the governmentled by Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Rama told CNN: “The challenge is not to throw concrete over the heads of flamingos. The challenge is to prove that development and nature can not only coexist, but that nature and development need each other.”
But thousands of people are taking to the streets as part of the Flamingo Revolution to protest not only the development, but other frustrations with the Albanian government’s approach to land access.
An investigation has already been launched by Albania’s anti-corruption office into how Kushner was able to buy the land by bypassing the normal system of public tenders for contracts.
In Albania, the law says the sea and sand are public property – but newly erected fences on the island have sparked further outrage.
A law just passed in 2024 allows “structures of excellence, five stars or more” to be built in environmentally protected areas.
Melitjan Nezaj, an environmental biologist at the Albanian organization Protection and Conservation of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), told CNN: “The project is quite destructive, as it is actually planned to be built within a protected area, within a protected landscape, which is actually one of the most intact wetlands in the Mediterranean.
For now, Trump appears to be moving forward with the project. Ivanka told one podcast recently: ‘You can’t just impose yourself on a country or culture – you have to understand it first to do it in a beautiful, subtle and meaningful way.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
MORE: The bison throws the man 8 meters into the air after chasing him through the trees
MORE: Hoglet was put down after being ‘kicked like a football’ by children
MORE: The elephant that fell into the abandoned well is rescued with an excavator
