Reports recently emerged that cabinet engaged in discussions over Prime Minister Abela’s proposal to give Miżieb and Mellieħa’s Aħrax to hunters, under a formal management agreement.

In response, 20 NGOs accused the government of a fait accompli, potentially handing over this land in an act that “jars completely with the promise of lobbying transparency”.

At the beginning of April, Birdlife had expressed outrage that the government would be allowing thousands of hunters to shoot in spring, during the ongoing threat posed by COVID-19 and without the assurance of effective regulation.

Whether Abela’s plan came as a res-ponse to this criticism is unclear, and how hunting can be effectively contained in a world being transformed by the virus remains problematic.

Hunting, and its implications for conservation and environmental care, is a perennial problem in Malta. With the failure of the Shout campaign (“No to Spring Hunting”) to gain sufficient traction five years ago, the upshot seems to be that present hunting practices are beyond reproach.

What that campaign did successfully was to bring to the fore the disagreeable undertones of class conflict and failure to achieve respectful communication which has crippled dialogue across the hunting divide for decades.

If hunters are to continue to be present in the Maltese countryside, then alongside stronger self-regulation and effective policing, respectful dialogue between hunters and activists must become a reality.

There seems little reason to believe that hunters are going to disappear any time soon and therefore education about hunting and how the hunter can fit into the nation’s greater scheme of conservation, in terms of the integrity of species, habitats and biodiversity, is an urgent priority.

One way to help accomplish these goals is to ensure that, when hunters and their organisations influence policy, they do so in harmony with sound scientific realities. There is the need to study and understand the population dynamics, behaviours and habitats of wildlife in the Maltese islands, so that decisions arise out of that research and not interests solely based in hunting and its attendant hobbies.

In Malta, hunting could become an engine for another important contribution to the environment by acting as a funding source for the support of habitat conservation. In many countries, licensing and training costs are already channeled into rigorous research about wildlife and concurrent education programmes for hunters. Such an investment in the role of hunters as potential conservationists would go some way to justify the disproportionately powerful influence that the lobby appears to have on government decision making.

The pitting of hunters and environmentalists against one another is undermining the quality of co-existence that should lie at the heart of ecological sustainability.

Ensuring that hunters have an understanding of where they fit into the conservation process may give these individuals the tools they need to engage with scientists and activists as peers, who share a similar commitment to the preservation of our rapidly disappearing rural heritage.

Ultimately, such a vision of empowered change and the de-escalation of conflict between rival groups will be impossible if we continue to have politicians who are willing to exploit the use of our land and sea as commodities for political leverage.

The dignity of the Maltese islands and the complexity of its lifeforms cannot be instrumentalised or objectified. No amount of votes or political glory will ever undo the damage being perpetrated to our precious ecosystems in the name of the few and at the expense of so many.