How white-tailed deer came back from the brink of extinction

The story of white-tailed deer underscores an important fact: Humans are not inherently damaging to the environment.

Given their abundance in American backyards, gardens and highway corridors these days, it may be surprising to learn that white-tailed deer were nearly extinct about a century ago. While they currently number somewhere in the range of 30 million to 35 million, at the turn of the 20th century, there were as few as 300,000 whitetails across the entire continent: just 1% of the current population.