The bright waters of the Narta lagoon mirrored the sky — until a massive white bird soared in from the Adriatic, skimming the surface with its dangling feet. “It’s a Dalmatian pelican,” my guide, Julian Hoffman, said.
It was my first time seeing the pelican in the wild, and I laughed with the joy of it. My introduction to the bird had come through a print by Edward Lear, the 19th-century naturalist and painter, that hung in my grandparents’ house. With its exaggerated bill and cap of fluffy feathers, it looked like a happy-go-lucky cartoon character to my childhood self — except for its eyes, which seemed sorrowful and questioning.
The pelican slowed to a splashy stop. Soon it was joined by other birds: greater flamingos, gray herons, Eurasian spoonbills, a flock of little egrets. The creatures preened and fished, squawked and chortled.
Mr. Hoffman and I were walking a sandy road in southwestern Albania, between the sparkling radiance of the Adriatic Sea and the Narta lagoon, a place prized by birders for its rich avian diversity. Our destination was a headland that would afford us a view of the 59,000-acre Vjosa River delta, which encompasses the lagoon as well as sand dunes, forests, salt pans and fishing villages. The delta is home to myriad plant and animal species, some of whose populations are dwindling, like the Dalmatian pelican. When Lear made his painting of the bird, the species was already declining because of hunting and habitat loss. Today it’s listed as “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and in Albania specifically as “critically endangered” by the Ministry of Tourism and Environment — “which is why places like this delta are indispensable to its survival,” Mr. Hoffman said.
I’d traveled to the delta to see a place renowned for its wildness — before its wildness is muted. In 2021, crews broke ground on the Narta lagoon’s northern end to build a new international airport, part of a broader effort to expand tourism in the region. The project continues today, despite opposition from national and international nongovernmental organizations and repeated calls to suspend construction from the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats.