The Eastern Band of Cherokee, deprived for centuries of the white-tailed deer that symbolizes their culture, are in the process of getting their icon back.

Though deer are considered almost a pest in many parts, devouring gardens and proliferating, the Cherokee themselves, who have cherished the animal for 10,000 years or more, do not have them on their own lands in what is today western North Carolina. 

A new program is taking deer from Morrow Mountain State Park in the Uwharrie Mountains in North Carolina, where their eating habits and numbers threaten plant species, and transplanting them into the Eastern Band’s 5,130-acre natural preserve on Cherokee tribal lands...