The goal of the Quagga project is to breed animals “indistinguishable” from quaggas, but this is impossible as selection has been solely for coat coloration. Genetic and morphological differences exist between quaggas and other plains zebras so that in the absence of selection for these characteristics it is untenable to refer to the rebred animals as "quaggas." Even so, these animals introduced into habitats once occupied by quaggas will aid in their rewilding. The relationship between the Quagga Project and conservation is discussed from the perspective of whether funds used for rebreeding could have been more fruitfully expended to conserve endangered organisms and threatened habitats in South Africa. Nonetheless, the Quagga project has been successful in inspiring support from a variety of people and organizations; as such, it could serve as a model for conservation ventures. The challenges facing wild equines are discussed with reference to Grévy's zebras and Selous’s zebras, especially climate change, habitat loss, and hunting.

The Khoekhoe and the hunter-gatherers of the Karoo, the |Xam, valued quagga meat, and used their hides and bones too; the |Xam told stories about quaggas and indigenous people portrayed them on rocks. This chapter describes hunting techniques of indigenous people andof the Europeans who settled in the Cape Colony. Hunting provided settlers with meat that they gave to their slaves and laborers and hides that were made into low-value items such as ropes, harnesses, whips, halters, bags, thongs, clothing, and veldschoen (rough shoes). In the nineteenth century, big-game hunters and hide-hunters joined in the killing. Settlers also used quaggas to protect their livestock and to pull wagons but this latter use was probably limited as quaggas were prone to fatigue; nonetheless, other plains zebras were harnessed with domestic equines and used to pull a stagecoach. Domestication of quaggas would have been disadvantageous as they could have harbored African Horse Sickness and this disease is transmissible by insect vectors to horses, donkeys, and mules, where it can be deadly. Quaggas did not need to be domesticated in order to be valued; biophilia could have prevented their extinction.

Quaggas, Equus quagga quagga, were plains zebras in southern Africathat ranged from east of Cape Town to the Orange Free State. They had fewer stripes on their bodies and a browner coloration than other zebras; their legs and bellies lacked stripes. The indigenous Khoe-San hunted quaggas and incorporated them into their art and folklore. Settlers used quaggas to pull wagons and kept them with livestock as protection against predators. In Europe, quaggas were admired, exhibited, and used to pull carriages. One quagga mated with a horse attracted commentary from Charles Darwin as the experiment seemed to confirm a theory of inheritance. Excessive hunting in their native habitats and the absence of captive breeding led to quaggas’ extinction in the late nineteenth century. Since 1987, the Quagga Project in South Africa has been selectively breeding plains zebras to produce animals with quagga coat coloration; however, could the funds expended have been better spent on conservation of endangered organisms and their habitats? Cape mountain zebras and bonteboks narrowly escaped extinction; how they were saved is discussed, along with other examples of conservation in South Africa.

|Xam told stories in which quaggas were cast as sentient beings with families, some of which were quite dysfunctional. |Xam narratives explain their stripes and brown coloration, their fear of humans, and their behavior when hunted. While they existed, they gathered little attention from Europeans apart from featuring in accounts of explorers and hunters; they appeared in two poems by Thomas Pringle and were the focus of Lord Morton’s account of telegony. Few extinct animals, however, have had such an eventful afterlife as quaggas: in the last eighty years they have featured in stories, poems, paintings, and a film, and they were the first extinct organism to have their DNA sequenced. Similarities between quagga genomes and those of plains zebras show that these animals are conspecific and so all plains zebras now have the binomial name of Equus quagga; nonetheless, there are genetic differences between quaggas and other plains zebras. Quaggas live on symbolically in the coat of arms of the Western Cape province, and as an example of anthropogenic extinction.

Reinhold Rau of the South Africa Museum in Cape Town felt a moral duty to rebreed quaggas. Sequencing showed that mitochondrial DNA from quaggas was identical, or almost so, with corresponding sequences from plains zebras. This conclusion provided the rationale for rebreeding but wildlife officials refused funding. Instead, supported by many people and organizations, Rau and others initiated the Quagga Project which selected offspring from a founder population of nineteen plains zebras with brown coloration of their bodies and relatively few stripes on their legs and hindquarters. By the fourth and fifth generation, animals with coat coloration resembling that of quaggas have been selectively bred, and those with the best coat coloration are named “Rau Quaggas.” Rau Quaggas and other Quagga Project zebras are present in national parks, on private land, and as the Core Herd of the Quagga Project at four locations. Rebreeding of quaggas is compared with other de-extinction projects such as the Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative that aims to rebreed an extinct species of Galapagos tortoise whose genes are present in an extant tortoise population.

Quaggas probably numbered hundreds of thousands in the eighteenth century. Hunted for millennia by indigenous people, they were shot by settlers for low-value items and later by big-game hunters. In the mid-nineteenth century, hunters killed quaggas on a large-scale when their hides became valued as high-quality leather; meat from this slaughter was eaten by diamond miners in Kimberley. Loss of habitats and water sources to farming was probably another factor contributing to their demise. The quaggas’ fate is compared with that of Cape mountain zebras, Equus zebra zebra, and bonteboks, Damaliscus pygargus pygargus which came close to extinction but were conserved initially on farms. Quaggas were extirpated in an ever-widening area whose epicenter was Cape Town until the last wild animal probably died in the Orange Free State in the late 1870s; the last captive quagga died in the Amsterdam Zoo on August 12, 1883. Quaggas were sought far outside their known range as late as the 1950s, and people have often denied the human causes of their extinction. This chapter uses quaggas as a case study to examine how people think about extinction and its causes.

At least thirty quaggas were kept in menageries and zoos in six European countries where they were appreciated as exotic animals. They were viewed by royalty, nobles, and ordinary people, portrayed by artists, photographed, and harnessed to pull carriages. Unfortunately, they were not bred in captivity, except for two foals born in the Antwerp Zoo which do not appear to have had any offspring. However, quaggas were mated with other equines: famously, a quagga stallion belonging to Lord Morton was mated with an Arabian horse mare who subsequently bore by an Arabian stallion striped foals that appeared to resemble her earlier quagga mate. Agasse painted “the First Sire” (the quagga), the "Second Sire" (the Arabian stallion), the Arabian mare, and her striped foals, and Charles Darwin postulated that “gemmules” from the quagga stallion had influenced the appearance of the foals born to the horses. This evidence seemed to argue for telegony – an old view of inheritance that the first mate of a female could affect her later offspring. However, Ewart assembled crucial evidence arguing that this conclusion was untenable.

The morphology of quaggas, their taxonomy, habitats, and behaviors are described. Photographs, illustrations, and taxidermy specimens are employed to examine representations and descriptions critically, for example, did quaggas have horse-like tails, and were Daniell and Harris correct in their illustrations of body striping? My analysis of taxidermy specimens shows sexual dimorphism: stallions were slightly smaller than mares, which is unlike the situation in other subspecies of plains zebras. Quaggas, named Equus quagga by both Boddaert and Gmelin, lived in a variety of habitats in the Cape Colony and Orange Free State (areas that are now part of the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and the Free State provinces) including: the nama Karoo, succulent Karoo, fynbos, Albany thicket, savanna, and grassland biomes. A quagga breeding group consisting of a stallion, several mares, and their foals often joined other breeding groups to form a herd. Quaggas often grazed with wildebeests (gnus) and ostriches, and all three species probably benefitted from this association; these animals often migrated together in large numbers seeking grazing and water.