Père David's deer has an unusual history: it once lived on the flooded plains of northern China, until as a result of the increasing encroachment of agricultural land, it disappeared totally in the wild. Western science considered it to be definitively extinct until a missionary called Armand David discovered a small herd of survivors in the gardens of the imperial palace in Peking in 1865. A few individuals were then sent to the park at Woburn, in England, and shortly after this all those left in China died. The small initial group in Woburn began to send Père David's deer to parks and zoos around the world, where they bred, and finally in 1986 a small group was able to be reintroduced into their natural habitat in China.