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# Twenty nine thousand names, and an island comes home
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/manoel-island/
- Published: 2026-08-18T20:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-21T13:06:43.000Z
- Description: A ninety nine year development concession over Manoel Island has ended, and the waterfront is going back to the people who asked for it.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Global Good News, All stories, Rewilding

There is a small island in Marsamxett Harbour, a few minutes from the middle of Valletta, with a fort on it and a good deal of open ground. For nearly a century, Manoel Island's future belonged to a development concession. As of this year it belongs to the public again.

In March, the Maltese government and the developer MIDI plc reached a settlement ending the ninety nine year concession over Manoel Island and part of Fort Tigne. The land returns to public ownership and is set to become a national park. In a country of a little over three hundred square kilometres, where waterfront is the most contested ground there is, that is an enormous thing.

What makes it our kind of story is how it happened. It was not a court case and it was not a change of government. It was neighbours.

A parliamentary petition was opened by **Robert Louis Fenech** on behalf of the Manoel Island: Post Ghalina campaign, run by **Moviment Graffitti** and **Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar** and endorsed by close to fifty organisations and community groups. It closed with **29,042 signatures** asking for one thing: that the island become a national heritage park rather than apartments.

"The petition exposed the popularity of the national heritage park vision," said campaign spokesperson **Marie Claire Gatt**. In a country of that size, twenty nine thousand signatures is not a petition. It is a census.

This is the argument we keep making here, and Malta has just proved it at national scale. The protected places that change how people feel are the ones they can walk onto. Not the remote reserve you read about, but the shoreline at the end of the bus route, where a family can spend a Sunday and a child can look into the water and see something living in it. Protect that, and you do not have to explain to anybody why it matters. They already know.

An island that was going to be sold is going to be walked on instead. Twenty nine thousand people asked, by name.

Our short take: reported by **Malta Today**, **Newsbook** and **The Malta Independent**. The settlement with **MIDI plc** was reached in March 2026, returning Manoel Island and Fort Tigne to public ownership. Petition figure of **29,042 signatures** as reported when the petition closed. Names: **Robert Louis Fenech**, who opened the petition; **Marie Claire Gatt**, campaign spokesperson; the campaign was led by **Moviment Graffitti** and **Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar**.