Closure of the hunting season in Malta has been hotly contested for centuries, with the island’s past rulers cashing in on hunting irregularities for hundreds of years, new research shows.

Under the Knights, hunting was a major sporting activity reserved for the nobility and the wealthy, with regulations growing stiffer and penalties harsher under consecutive grandmasters. Offenders would either be handed a monetary fine or sentenced for up to five years rowing on the galleys.

There were different rules for the privileged. Buskett grounds, for example, were off limits to local gentry, landowners, the clerical class and patentees of the Inquisitor.

Harsh punishments were inflicted on those caught in possession of hunting-related equipment, including dogs, or anyone who dared to cut grass from Comino because it served as fodder for rabbits. The northern part of Malta and some parts of Gozo were also protected.

Read: 'We hope you're happy now,' hunters' lobby tells EU Commission

The Order issued special hunting laws that specified closed seasons. Even back then, such restrictions were meant to protect the limited supply of game and to enable rabbits and birds to breed at certain times, according to a paper by Carmel Cassar, just published in the Journal of Mediterranean Studies. The paper is called ‘Hunting and game in Malta in the 16th to the 18th centuries: a historical anthropological approach’.

Hunting soon transformed into a top male rural sport

For the lay Maltese, hunting bans meant being deprived of a cheap and abundant supply of meat, their main protein source.

Peasants believed that birds, wild rabbits and other freely-available wildlife, including plants and snails, were there for all, especially if these were found on common land.

When the British moved in, they wanted to encourage peasants to join the militia, so they not only allowed the Maltese to hunt freely but even did away with the idea of a closed season.

Hunting not only made the colonial rulers more popular among the peasants but also helped train them in the use of firearms should the need to resist any foreign invaders arise.

However, in the end, these changes may have put even more pressure on existing stock of game, threatening at least some species with extinction.

Prof. Cassar told the Times of Malta that, following the abrogation of the strict hunting rules by the British, peasants no longer viewed game as a source of protein.

Instead, he added, hunting became a pastime that soon transformed into a top male rural sport.

Despite hunting priorities changing over the centuries, a constant that intensified during the British rule was the association of hunting with a man’s worth, irrespective of whether they were rich and powerful or poor and vulnerable.

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