La Maddalena park studies a 2027 numero chiuso: a 2,500-a-day cap already exists

What the park president said

On Tuesday 3 November L'Unione Sarda published a video report on changes to the plan of the Parco Nazionale dell'Arcipelago di La Maddalena for the 2027 season. In it, park president Rosanna Giudice summed up the direction: «Si va verso il numero chiuso: ingresso contingentato e più zone di ancoraggio» (we are moving towards a closed number: restricted entry and more anchoring zones), as transcribed by Olbia.it.

Restricted entry to the archipelago
More designated anchoring zones
A paid app to manage the system
Changes to the fire-prevention plan after the fire on Santa Maria island, which broke out on 10 September and burned about five hectares of scrub, GreenMe reported

The park links the plans to a summer of heavy boat traffic in the most sensitive areas. L'Unione Sarda describes the changes as «correttivi» still being studied.

What has not been decided

As of 5 November we found no park resolution, public consultation or published draft. The reports give no answer to the questions that decide who is affected:

Whether a limit would count boats, people, single bays or the whole park
Whether it would apply to private boats, commercial operators or both, and whether residents would be treated differently
How many entries a day would be allowed, and in which months
Where the new anchoring zones would be, and whether they would be buoy fields
What the app would cost, who would build and run it, and how it would differ from the park's existing online permit system
How the rules would be enforced

The day before the video, the park marked its 30th anniversary with environment minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, who spoke of a reform of the law on parks and marine protected areas, L'Unione Sarda reported. «Come Ente siamo pochi ma la tenacia è tanta» (as a park body we are few, but we are tenacious), Giudice said, according to Sardinia Post. Neither report mentions a numero chiuso.

What already applies today

Access to La Maddalena by sea is already regulated, and a cap already exists for commercial operators.

Park permit. Any boat that sails, moors or anchors within 300 metres of the coast needs one, paid only through PagoPA; boats without one pay a 40% surcharge plus fines, according to the park's permit page. Kayaks, pedalos, rowing boats and windsurf boards pay no fee.
Prices. The official 2026 tariff list charges by length: €2 per metre per day up to 10 metres, €3 from 10 to 24 metres, €4.50 from 24 to 35 metres and €5 above. A week costs €50 for a boat of 8 to 10 metres. Online purchase saves 5%, sailing boats 40%, and residents of Palau, Arzachena and Santa Teresa Gallura 50%. The list applies from 1 January to 31 December 2026.
Commercial caps. In July 2026 the park board unanimously approved new rules, transitional until the park plan is complete: 450 permits for boat hire with skipper, 338 of them (75%) for operators resident in La Maddalena for at least five years and 112 for others, and 530 permits for bareboat rental. Boats may carry at most 12 passengers. The rules confirm a ceiling of 2,500 daily accesses to the marine area, L'Unione Sarda and Guardiavecchia reported. In February 2024 Guardiavecchia reported that the regional administrative court (TAR) had rejected an appeal by La Maddalena boat operators against the park's earlier rental and charter rules (Guardiavecchia).
Coast Guard ordinance 33/2026. Trial measures for the summers of 2026 and 2027, from June to 30 September, as reported by L'Unione Sarda, Yacht and mySea: 7 knots within 500 metres of the coast and 10 knots from 500 to 1,000 metres; anchoring only on sand or mud, never on Posidonia meadows; no-anchoring corridors for emergency boats; swimming only within 5 metres of your own boat; no discharge of black or grey water.
Spiaggia Rosa, Budelli. Closed since 1994: no walking on the sand, swimming or anchoring. The park director told L'Unione Sarda in 2025 that recovery will take «secoli, millenni probabilmente» (centuries, probably millennia).
Cala Coticcio and Cala Brigantina, Caprera. Since 2022, only with an authorised guide and a €3 park ticket, under-12s free, according to the park. Of 244 guide authorisations for March to July 2026, 161 went to resident guides, L'Unione Sarda reported.

Our La Maddalena visitor guide covers ferries and the islands; the rules above are the ones in force for 2026.

A numero chiuso has been promised before

July 2020. Then park president Fabrizio Fonnesu announced a numero chiuso for Porto Madonna that same summer, La Nuova Sardegna reported.
September 2021. After a viral video of boats packed into Porto Madonna, Fonnesu promised measures for 2022, about 100 to 120 smart buoys and visits in shifts, but said a numero chiuso could not be set «dall'oggi al domani» (overnight) without scientific data, and that the park favoured «fruizione controllata» (controlled use) over «completa chiusura» (complete closure), Il Fatto Quotidiano reported.
June 2022. The park capped boat rental and charter permits at 360, 75% for residents, and limited Cala Coticcio and Cala Brigantina to guided visits, ANSA reported.
August 2024. Giudice, then the park's commissioner, said «Occorre il numero chiuso» (a numero chiuso is needed) and banned recreational boats from anchoring overnight, from 21:00 to 08:00, with exemptions for residents and long-established local firms, Il Fatto Quotidiano reported.
June 2025. The TAR suspended the extension of the night ban to 2025 in an interim order, after an appeal by the Associazione Operatori Nautici NordEst Sardegna, Yachting News reported. The 2026 rules no longer mention it.
August 2025. Giudice proposed buoys, with no free anchoring, at Cala Coticcio, Cala Corsara, Porto Palma and Porto Madonna from 2026, La Nuova Sardegna reported. We found no official count of buoys installed since.

What the evidence shows

Anchoring pressure is real. A 2025 WWF analysis of 2024 ship-tracking (AIS) data counted more than 13,000 anchorings in the La Maddalena and Golfo Aranci area, among the highest in the Mediterranean; AIS covers only equipped boats, so the true number is higher. WWF found impacts below 15% where rules are enforced and alternative moorings exist, according to its summary.
Buoys alone did not work. A peer-reviewed study in the park, La Manna and others, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2015, found Posidonia disturbed both inside buoy fields and at control sites twelve years after they were introduced, and concluded that the buoy fields and anchoring restrictions had not proved an efficient system.
Rules are not paid or enforced. Park director Giulio Plastina estimates that 30 to 35% of boaters do not pay the access fee, more than €700,000 a year in lost revenue, Mondo Balneare reported. He called the €51 fine for anchoring on Posidonia «ridicola»; in the Calanques national park near Marseille a catamaran was fined almost €100,000 for the same offence, SuperYacht24 reported. Park staff cannot issue fines; they report to the Coast Guard and forest police.
The park has money. Its 2026 budget forecasts a surplus of about €22.27 million built up from unspent funds in earlier years, and about €1.21 million from services and permits, L'Unione Sarda reported in April.

Numbers that do not add up

On our reading of the public record, the officials who would set a new limit do not agree on the basic figures.

Boats and people a day. La Nuova Sardegna estimated «tra 2 e 3000 imbarcazioni» a day in July and August 2025. On 21 August 2026 Giudice said aerial surveys found about 6,500 people a day at sea (Sardinia Post). Five days later, a letter from the Region to the environment minister, signed by president Alessandra Todde and environment councillor Rosanna Laconi, spoke of more than 6,000 boats a day on the Posidonia meadows at summer peaks (L'Unione Sarda). 6,000 boats would mean barely one person per boat. The director's figure of about 30,000 boats a year measures something else, and he said himself that 40 to 45% of the data is missing because many boaters enter without a permit (L'Unione Sarda). We found no published count behind the daily figures.
What the existing cap counts. The 2,500 ceiling is described as «accessi giornalieri» and «unità giornaliere» in the same 2023 report (L'Unione Sarda), and as «2.500 persone al giorno» by Giudice in 2026 (Sardinia Post). Separately, the April 2026 rules set «700 unità giornaliere totali» for rental boats (L'Unione Sarda). Accesses, units and people are different things.
Money is not the obstacle, by the park's own account. In 2024 Giudice said of hiring rangers: «Non è questione di soldi, quelli ci sono» (it is not a question of money, the money is there), Il Fatto Quotidiano reported. In August 2025 Plastina said €20 million was ready to invest but could not be used without a full board (SuperYacht24). The park's board has since met and unanimously approved the July 2026 rules, and in April 2026 the forecast surplus was about €22.27 million. Fee income is small by comparison: just over €900,000 expected in 2025, which Giudice called «briciole» (crumbs), La Nuova Sardegna reported.
Fines. The park calls its fines too low, yet in July 2023 its board unanimously approved a sanctions table with increases of up to tenfold, which stalled at the ministry when that board's term ended. Italia Nostra says the ministry never rejected it, L'Unione Sarda reported in August.
Region and park. The Region's August letter asked the ministry for police powers for park staff, sanctions proportionate to the ecological damage and more Coast Guard patrols. The published account of the letter does not mention a numero chiuso.
The resident quota. In 2022 Confindustria Nautica, the boating industry federation, called the park's decision, which reserved 75% of permits for residents and 90 for everyone else, «fortemente discriminatoria» and said it had «nulla a che fare con la tutela ambientale» (nothing to do with environmental protection), as reported by Ecoseven. In 2023 a park board member, Gianluca Mureddu, said the 75/25 split follows the park's 1996 founding decree, L'Unione Sarda reported. And in its June 2025 order on the night ban, the TAR held that the park could not claim that residents anchoring freely do not cause «gli stessi potenziali pregiudizi» (the same potential harm) as everyone else, so a more favourable regime for them did not fit the park's purposes.
The operators' side. The local operators' association, which says it represents about 100 firms from Olbia to Santa Teresa, argues that the main pressure comes from up to 6,000 tourists a day landing on Spargi rather than from anchored boats (SuperYacht24). Those tourists arrive by boat. The same association has proposed mooring buoys instead of closures, beaches reached only by swimming, a ban on mega-yachts anchoring and a higher park fee.

Who works on this water

We found no official count of jobs in boat tourism around the archipelago. The park director's own figures from October 2024 give the scale: about 300 rental and charter businesses with about 900 boats, 26 passenger boats with capacity for 4,250 people a day, 20 dive centres with 34 boats, 14 snorkelling operators and 8 sailing schools with 184 boats. The local operators' association alone says it represents about 100 firms between Olbia and Santa Teresa Gallura. La Maddalena itself has shrunk from 11,841 residents in 2008, when the US Navy base closed, to 10,805 in 2023, L'Unione Sarda reported.

What happened elsewhere

Where access was cut suddenly, local workers paid:

Boracay, Philippines. The island was closed to tourists for six months in 2018. The state research institute PIDS estimated losses of PHP 20.8 to 83.15 billion in output and PHP 7 to 27.9 billion in wages; about 14,800 registered workers were on the island (17,200 in the municipality of Malay), 44% of them in passenger transport, plus about 19,000 unregistered workers. Four months after it reopened, most of the workers who had left had not come back, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported.
Maya Bay, Thailand. Closed in June 2018 for what was meant to be four months, it stayed shut until 1 January 2022 (Thai PBS). The Krabi tourism association, about 200 operators, called the extension «unfair» and asked for hearings so local people could earn a living, the Jakarta Post reported.
Komodo, Indonesia. In August 2022 a fee rise from Rp 200,000 to Rp 3.75 million, meant to limit visitors, set off a strike of at least 700 tourism workers (Jakarta Post). The government dropped it in December, after hundreds of bookings had been cancelled (Bali Discovery).
Balearic Islands. After a Balearic government decree on charter operations, the small operators' association APANIB warned that seven in ten small charter firms could close, affecting about 800 workers. That is a forecast, not an outcome (Ara Balears).

Where caps were introduced with booking and notice, we found no evidence of economic collapse, but also little economic data:

Porquerolles, France. A target of 6,000 visitors a day since 2021, exceeded once that summer against 15 times in 2020; the official review gives no jobs or revenue figures (TPM Métropole).
Sugiton calanque, Marseille. 400 visitors a day by booking, against up to 2,500 before (Banque des Territoires).
Bréhat, Brittany. With a quota of 4,700 visitors a day on summer weekdays, the economic impact was «extrêmement faible» (extremely low), a local official said, and a restaurant owner who had called the measure dangerous said «Ca n'a pas changé grand-chose» (it hasn't changed much) (L'Info Durable).
Cabrera, Balearics. At most 50 boats a day may moor, on paid buoys (Govern de les Illes Balears).

What it means for visitors

Nothing changes for now. The 2026 permit, prices and Coast Guard rules above are the ones that apply until the park adopts and publishes new ones. Ordinance 33/2026 already covers the summer of 2027. If you plan a boat trip or charter in the archipelago next summer, buy the park permit as usual and check the park's website in spring for any 2027 changes. For permit questions, the park's public relations office is on 0789 790224.

Our view

This section is the opinion of Sardinia Blog's publisher, not news reporting. Sardinia Blog belongs to the Rental12 ecosystem, which lets homes in Olbia and Golfo Aranci, so tourism on this coast affects our business.

Nobody who lives on this coast wants Porto Madonna turned into a car park of anchors. The Posidonia damage is real and the August peaks are real. But a park-wide numero chiuso, announced on video with no figure, no published study and no consultation, is the wrong tool. Done like that, it will do damage that does not come back.

Look at who earns a living on this water. The park's own director counts about 300 rental and charter businesses, 26 passenger boats, 20 dive centres, 14 snorkelling operators and 8 sailing schools. Behind them are skippers, deckhands, guides, mechanics, ticket sellers and the bars on the quay, in La Maddalena, Palau, Cannigione, Santa Teresa, Porto Cervo, Olbia and Golfo Aranci. Many of them earn the year in four months. We know a lot of them personally. A cap that lands in spring, run through an app nobody has seen, does not trim their season. It ends it, overnight.

We have seen where that leads. When Boracay shut, most of the workers who left had still not come back months after it reopened. When Komodo's price jumped overnight, hundreds of bookings were cancelled before the government backed down. Once customers learn to go somewhere else, they do not return because a rule is softened a year later. An island that has already lost a thousand residents since the US Navy left cannot afford that experiment.

The park does not need a new limit to start. It has a 2,500-a-day cap that has been described as accesses, units and people, a €51 fine its own director calls ridiculous, a tougher sanctions table approved in 2023 that stalled at the ministry, a third of boaters who do not pay by the director's estimate and more than €22 million in reserves. Spend it. Put buoys in the bays under pressure, as promised in 2021 and again in 2025. Give park staff the power to fine, as the Region has asked. Publish a boat count everyone can check. Ban mega-yachts from anchoring, as the local operators themselves have proposed. Make the fine hurt whoever drops an anchor on Posidonia, not the skipper who follows the rules.

Then, with a season of real data, talk about limits for specific bays, with the people who work there. Protect the islands, yes. But officials who cannot agree on how many boats there are should not decide, from one summer to the next, how many families on this coast may work.

A note on the numbers

The 2027 proposals are known only from the president's reported statements; we could not watch the full Unione Sarda video and rely on Olbia.it's transcription of her words. We could not open the official text of ordinance 33/2026 or the 2026 disciplinari; their contents come from the press reports linked above. The permit prices are from the park's official tariff list for 2026. The boat and visitor figures are officials' estimates, not published counts. The Boracay losses are PIDS model estimates made at the time of the closure. The Balearic figure is an industry forecast. We have asked no one at the park for comment yet; we will add any reply.

A day boat at anchor off a granite shore. Photo: Sardinia Blog.