Albania is within the midst of a ‘Flamingo Revolution’, sparked by Ivanka Trump’s plans to show a rural island right into a luxury hotel.
Donald Trump’s daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, are reportedly going ahead with plans to remodel a Cold War-era military base right into a luxury resort.
Sazan is Albania’s largest island and is a delegated military exclusion zone, situated in a strategically vital location between the Strait of Otranto and the mouth of the Bay of Vlorë.
It’s also the placement of Europe’s last wild river delta, which is home to the critically endangered Balkan lynx, Mediterranean monk seal, and 1000’s of pink flamingos.
Kushner and Trump’s proposed project, which is backed by Saudi Arabian investors, would cripple the already fragile ecosystem.
Activists have clashed with police at the location, hanging up signs like ‘Albania shouldn’t be on the market,’ ‘Hands off Albanian soil,’ and ‘Sazan shouldn’t be a personal island, it belongs to the Albanian people.’
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‘From start to complete, there was a complete lack of transparency,’ Aleksandër Trajçe, executive director of the country’s leading conservation group, the Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), told The Guardian.
‘Now we have seen no public consultation or public documentation regarding permits, and so now what we’re saying is, in the event that they remove the bulldozers, remove the fence and restore the habitats to what they were, then we will start talking.’
It’s also a moment of reckoning for the Albanian government, led by Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Rama told CNN: ‘The challenge shouldn’t be to pour concrete over the heads of flamingos. The challenge is to prove that development and nature can’t only coexist, but that nature and development need one another.’
Hundreds are taking to the streets as a part of the Flamingo Revolution to protest not only the event, but other frustrations with the Albanian government’s approach to land access.
An investigation has been launched by Albania’s anti-corruption office into how Kushner was capable of purchase the land while bypassing the conventional system of public tenders for contracts.
In Albania, the law states that sea and sand are public property – but newly erected fences on the island have sparked further anger.
A newly passed law in 2024 allows ‘structures of excellence, five stars or more’ to be in-built environmentally protected areas.
Melitjan Nezaj, an environmental biologist on the Albanian organisation Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA), told CNN: ‘The project is sort of destructive, because it’s actually planned to be built inside a protected area, inside a protected landscape, which is definitely one of the crucial intact wetlands within the Mediterranean.’
For now, Trump appears to be going ahead with the project. Ivanka told a podcast recently: ‘You may’t just, like, impose yourself upon a rustic or culture — you’ve gotten to grasp it first to do it in a wonderful and delicate and meaningful way.’
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