A statement by the Minister of State for Parliamentary Relations, Erjona Ismaili, that before the Socialist Party came to power there were no “flamingo seeds” was not taken seriously by environmentalists, even though it was addressed specifically to them.
“…Environmentalists, this lagoon that we are talking about today and are asking the government not to kill these flamingos and pelicans, there were not a single flamingo at that time. It took 12 years of initiatives for us to reach the diversity that we have today ,” said Minister Ismaili.
But the support of this narrative by Prime Minister Edi Rama himself in a meeting with foreign journalists prompted the Ornithological Society of Albania, led by Professor Dr. Taulant Bino, to publish detailed data on the evolution of the wintering population of flamingos and the number of birds in Vjosa-Narta, both before and after the “Berisha” government, data that ornithologist Taulant Bino also made available to Faktoje.
Rama
“Let’s talk about the environment. Flamingos. Do you know when flamingos started returning to Albania? Because they weren’t. When I came to government, when we took over the government, there were no flamingos there.