It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. The Nartë lagoon is at the heart of the extensive and largely unspoiled delta of Albania’s Vjosë River, which researchers consider Europe’s most intact large river delta.

But that accolade won’t save it. The Vjosë delta and its lagoon are under siege. They are set to become the victims of a series of massive coastal tourist developments, partly bankrolled by a company set up by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The hotels and luxury villas will accommodate up to a million visitors arriving annually at a new international airport currently being built on salt marshes around the lagoon.

Southern Albania is a rare European oasis for nature. The Vjosë River is often called Europe’s last undammed river outside Russia. It flows freely for 170 miles from the Pindus mountains in Greece, where it rises, and through canyons in remote Albanian highlands, before spreading unconstrained across a wide floodplain and emptying into the Adriatic through its 59,000-acre delta.

Even if the lagoon survives as a body of water, Vorpsi warns, its hydrology will be wrecked; the extensive dunes that have been built up at the delta’s outer edge will be at extreme risk; and the noise and lights from the airport will disorientate and scare away birds and turtles. It will be a wildlife wipeout.