In the 1990s, writer Suzy Pope’s father played a role in the damming of Albania’s lakes and rivers, one chapter of the country’s disastrous environmental story. Three decades on, she finds a rewilded landscape, but threats to nature remain, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s luxury resort.
When my dad worked as an energy consultant in Albania in the 1990s, the country was emerging from five decades of isolationist dictatorship. But as he helped plan the dams and hydroelectric plants that still power much of Albania, illegal logging and riverbed extraction were rife, economic survival took priority, and environmental consequences could wait.
Albania wasn’t alone in its drive to harness river power—it was just a little late to the party. Europe’s biggest and bluest rivers had already been mired by vast concrete structures during the post-war hydroelectricity boom. In the pristine glacial waters of their Alpine rivers, Switzerland built the tallest dam, and France the largest pump capacity. But it was Albania that experienced the fastest biodiversity loss in Europe.
Now, environmental consequences can’t wait. The Albanian people know this, with thousands filling Tirana’s center—six weeks and counting—to protest their government’s reneging on a promise to protect the Vjosa-Narta landscape. All so Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump can build a massive, luxury resort on Sazan Island, on what is supposed to be protected land.
In 2024, the Albanian government passed a law that allowed luxury tourism projects from foreign investors to infringe on protected land. Kushner’s project not only threatens the habitat of hundreds of flamingos (the symbol of this new ‘flamingo revolution’) and the nesting ground of the endangered Egyptian vulture, it completely undermines the idea of ‘public land’ in Albania.
Albania probably isn’t the first place that springs to mind when it comes to eco-travel, and this latest news doesn’t help. But this small swathe of land at the bottom of the Balkans has a diverse landscape: Towering, slate-gray mountains, plains that stretch for miles, and a shimmering Ionian coastline with crystal-clear water.
“After the dictatorship, it was too expensive to dam the Vjosa River … There was not enough money in Albania to tame a river of this power.”
- Uncle Tini, rafting guide
Some 30 years after my dad inspected the northern rivers in a hard hat and high-vis jacket, I’m just outside the pretty riverside village of Përmet, standing in the shallows of Albania’s only untamed river. I’m in a hard hat too, but armed with a rafting paddle, rather than a clipboard.
Balkan lynx stalk through remote forests, brown bears have been spotted in the mountains, and endangered Egyptian vultures soar above river valleys. Lakes and rivers glow with such iridescent shades of green and blue, it looks surreal. But it’s all natural, especially the Vjosa River.
The Vjosa is considered Europe’s last major wild river, flowing freely from its source in Greece’s Pindus Mountains through southern Albania before reaching the Adriatic Sea at its delta near Vlorë, where fencing has been erected to begin work on the Kushner-Trump resort.
While Europe is spending millions on re-wilding measures, trying to restore its lost natural waterways, the Vjosa’s course hasn’t been manipulated by large dams, weirs or concrete barriers. But it’s not through lack of trying.
“Studies were conducted during the dictatorship and it turned out that floods from the dam would be so large that all the farmland in the Vjosa Valley would be submerged,” my rafting guide Tinor aka Uncle Tini tells me. He knows the river better than most. Apart from running Tini Rafting Center from Përmet since 2012, he is also a ranger in the Vjosa Wild River National Park, monitoring the wildlife and protecting the landscape from illegal activity.
“After the dictatorship, it was too expensive to dam the Vjosa River—it was too wide, and too wild,” Tini says. “They made a lot of plans, but nothing ever happened. There was not enough money in Albania to tame a river of this power.”
At one point, around 45 hydroelectric dam projects were planned. Each one has been canceled, and the Vjosa remains free to meander its natural path, cutting through rock over millennia.
Like algae across a still-water surface, the rewilding of rivers is spreading across Europe: Removing the concrete barriers and trenches humans put in place over the last hundred years and returning to the water’s natural flow allows Europe’s rivers to heal themselves.
The Jukajoki Restoration Project in Finland is correcting the man-made ditching and draining in the river basin so that water can flow freely to the sea again, restoring the habitat for trout, wading birds and even brown bears.
Poland and Germany are working to rewild the Oder Delta by re-flooding peatlands, re-connecting waterways and re-introducing species. Now, if you’re kayaking across the newly flooded plains, you might spot Eurasian Lynx or roaming bison. France, once proud of its record-breaking hydroelectric dam capacity, has re-wilded over 500 miles (800 kilometers) of river across 30 different initiatives.
Përmet doesn’t have chain hotels or restaurants. My accommodation is a rural guesthouse run by a couple and their son, and the riverbank is lined with local restaurants serving traditional dishes.
In Scotland, where I live, the same shift is happening. The Garlogie Dam on the River Dee in Aberdeenshire was destroyed to allow endangered Atlantic salmon to thrive. Now, after a £1.6 million (USD2.2m) investment from the Scottish Government’s Water Environment Fund, Levern Water near Glasgow has seen trout return to its previously barren waters.
Meanwhile, Albania, almost by accident, found itself with something other European countries were fighting to get back. In 2023, Prime Minister Edi Rama designated the entire river national parkland, creating Europe’s first and only Wild River National Park. It’s protected from logging and riverbed extraction by rangers like Tini, and legislatively from building permits and human development.
The move was celebrated as a step to undo some of the disastrous biodiversity loss of Albania’s Communist and post-Communist era. It’s no wonder, then, that thousands of Albanians are protesting the Kushner-Trump construction at the protected Vjosa delta.
It’s not that tourism isn’t welcome in Albania. Far from it. “During Communism, I was rafting this river using old truck wheel chocks,” Tini tells me. “I never thought we would have tourists here in Përmet. It is a lifeline for us now. They come to raft the river but stay in local guesthouses. People here can set up a small business by the riverside and make a living.”
Përmet doesn’t have chain hotels or restaurants. My accommodation is a rural guesthouse run by a couple and their son, and the riverbank is lined with local restaurants serving traditional dishes like cornbread soaked in sheep’s cheese, and lamb slow-cooked on a spit.
We push off from a slip of shingle beach by the riverside; the strong current grips our raft as hard as I hold my T-grip. Tini calls out simple instructions: “Left, forward!” and we paddle towards a churning white cauldron of water., bumping over the rapids elicits whoops and smiles, like we’re riding the log flume in a natural water park.
After we’ve slowed to a sleepy river pace, Tini points out some of the local fauna rusting in the surrounding trees: Small wading plovers, a majestic heron and a snatch of shimmering sapphire as a kingfisher flits away. A bird of prey wheels through the air high above us and I squint against the sunlight, trying to identify it.
“We have four pairs of Egyptian vultures we monitor in the national park,” he says. “For decades, they didn’t come back to Albania, but now they fly 8,000 kilometers [4,970 miles] from South Africa, lay eggs, and fly away again. Nature is returning.”
We plop into the milky-green water one by one and bob about in life jackets, letting the current pull us alongside the raft without any effort, listening to the rustle and pip of birdlife in the trees. Nature is returning. Clambering back into the raft, we hit the final stretch of rapids and we paddle against the wild current until my arms ache.
Later, it’s time to soak aching muscles in thermal baths where the Langarica River joins the Vjosa. There’s an eggy hint of sulphur as we arrive at Benjë Thermal Baths, just outside Përmet. A trail leads to a stone Ottoman bridge straddling the river. The only facilities are a small changing cabin and the remains of an outdoor Ottoman spa, including three thermal baths. The water is heated by a natural hot spring and is said to have healing properties. I’m just hoping the sulphur-rich water might prevent the blister from my T-grip forming.
Soaking in the 18th-century baths, I think about the people who have spent their lives on the Vjosa. They’ve set up small rafting companies, rural guesthouses and traditional restaurants with riverfront terraces—their livelihoods are here.
As tourists, we may not be able to stop the Albanian government from granting US billionaires permission to build luxury resorts on protected land, but we can choose to spend our time and money supporting small, riverside communities like Përmet—who want to protect the Egyptian vulture, not destroy its habitat. And if that choice happens to come with a relaxing soak in thermal spas or a day rafting the rapids of Europe’s last wild river, that’s a welcome bonus.
****
Adventure.com strives to be a low-emissions travel publication. We are powered by, but editorially independent of, Intrepid Travel, the world’s largest travel B Corp, who help ensure Adventure.com maintains high standards of sustainability in our work and activities. You can visit our sustainability page or read our Contributor Impact Guidelines for more information.
Suzy Pope is a freelance travel writer and co-author of the DK guide to Albania. Her work has been published in The Independent, The Times, Wizz Air magazine, Wanderlust and many more., and she also reviews restaurants in her home city of Edinburgh for The List magazine. When traveling, you can usually find her digging about local markets and scoffing the messiest local dish she can find.
