I am writing to express my views on the bill sponsored by Assemblyman Michael Panter to restructure the hunter-controlled Fish and Wildlife Council.

This bill will not affect donations for food pantries. I personally donate to these pantries and they have always been well stocked with local grocery items, by generous people, long before venison was ever donated to them. We do not need diseased venison, feeding off of our chemically treated trees and lawns, to feed our hungry.

We as New Jersey taxpayers are paying for community- based deer management because of the council's continued poor management practices that benefit their needs and not food pantries. Our Fish and Wildlife also use our tax dollars to keep deer inventories high to keep this hunter-controlled council's trophy hunting alive.

It is not ethical to manipulate habitat, as they do with our deer population, to facilitate recreational hunting.

Hunting allows New Jersey to qualify for federal dollars, but we can collect that same revenue through excise taxes on wildlife watching effects, i.e., binoculars, outdoor apparel, camping equipment, instead of revenue generated through keeping our herds unnaturally young and reproducing to encourage more hunting.

Assemblyman Panter's effort to restructure our council is the humane solution and will be the lasting solution.

Mary Ann Vastino

Somerset