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.