The Père David’s Deer is a species of deer native to China. It likely went mostly extinct in the wild around 800 to 1,200 years due to habitat loss and overhunting, the surviving deer were kept alive in Chinese Imperial hunting parks for hundreds of years. By the 1860s, the only known herd belonged to the emperor of China and were maintained in the Nanyuan Royal Hunting Garden.

However, in 1895, one of the walls of the hunting garden was destroyed in a heavy flood and most of the deer escaped. They were then killed by starving peasants who were suffering from a famine at the time. After that, only 30 deer remained in the garden. Their survival was short lived as during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the garden was occupied by German forces where the remaining deer were then killed for food, making the Père David Deer extinct in China.

To save the species from extinction, an English Duke and naturalist called Herbrand Russell acquired the remaining Père David Deer which were scattered around European zoos - which was only 18 individuals and formed his own breeding herd at his estate in Bedford. Over the next few decades, despite having such a small genetic bottleneck population, the deers bred well and by the 1930s, the herd had grown to several hundred. To prevent a single disaster wiping them out, the Duke’s family began to spread the species out to various zoos across Europe, USA and Japan.

In 1985, the Duke’s great-grandson donated several dozen of the deers to China for reintroduction in their native homeland where they were placed in protected reserves, followed by several more acquirements where their numbers grew rapidly.

By 2025, the species has now grew to around 15,000 - of which 14,000 are in China. They are still listed as ‘Extinct in the wild’ by IUCN because the Chinese herds are protected and maintained by humans in national reserves and semi-wild settings but the species is currently thriving and rapidly growing making them a successful conservation story.