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Quest for the Quagga
9.30pm BBC 1 12/08/98
For thousands of years, the expansive, barren
plains of the Karoo in Southern Africa provided the backdrop
for one of Africa's most beautiful animals, the quagga.
Colonisation in the 1800's marked the beginning of settlers
and the end of the quagga. Within a few years, it had been
shot into extinction. The last quagga died in captivity a
hundred and fourteen years ago. |
Yet was it the last? Eleven years ago a unique project,
with an extraordinary goal, was initiated by Reinhold Rau, Head
Taxidermist at the South Africa National Museum. With the knowledge
gained from a skin sample that Rau salvaged through luck and
foresight, he's trying to bring the quagga back to life.
Quaggas were a type of wild horse. Their front half was striped
like a zebra and the back half had few or no stripes at all, like a
domestic horse.
When the settlers landed in Africa, the destruction of the
quagga was swift. Millions were slaughtered for sport or to make
saddles, leather driving belts, furniture and upholstery. 
Others were transported to zoos and private collections
around the world. It was fashionable to collect weird and wonderful
wildlife from the colonies. In the 1830's at Knowsley Hall in
Lancashire, home of the XIII Earl of Derby's famous menagerie, there
were two quaggas. London Zoo also had a pair, but at that time zoos
were for spectacles not conservation, everyone thought the quagga
was in plentiful supply, so no-one bred them. The last quagga died
in Amsterdam Zoo on August 12 1883. At the time, no one knew it was
the last of its kind.
In 1967, Reinhold Rau, Head Taxidermist at the South Africa
National Museum, discovered a poorly mounted quagga foal. Reinhold
was surprised to find such a valuable specimen in this sorry state.
He remounted the hide and found it had never been skinned properly.
Beneath its hide was connective tissue like that on a freshly
skinned animal.
Reinhold offered his find to fellow
scientists, but found no interest. Colleagues told him to throw it
away because it was too old. But Reinhold kept it, "Although it was
offal, it was from an extinct animal and ought to be kept".
He put in it a drawer where it stayed for nearly a decade.
With this piece of history in his possession, Reinhold became
fascinated by the possibility of a link between zebras and quaggas.
Most zebras look nothing like the quagga, but Reinhold had a hunch
that the quagga was not a different species but a subspecies of the
Plains zebra which was browner and less stripy than other zebras. If
he was right, then although the quagga was extinct, its genes were
still around. If these genes could be united, the quagga could be
recreated, but in the 1970's, this was only a theory and not enough
to act on.
Then in 1981 Dr Oliver Ryder from San Diego Zoo made contact with
Reinhold and offered to analyse the quagga material with newly
developed genetic techniques. Bits of 150 year old quagga flesh and
connective tissue went to three separate Californian labs. They
isolated fragments of DNA and cloned them. To the amazement of the
scientific community, the quagga DNA matched that of the southern
variant of the plains zebra. Reinhold was right. "What the DNA
showed was that the quagga had cousins still living and its cousins
carried some quagga genes. If we chose from its relative and bred
them together carefully... we could end up with a quagga."
So began the project which inspired Jurassic Park, the
resurrection of a species. But not for a moment is it the Quagga
Project about artificial cloning. It's based entirely on natural
selection. David Barnaby, an amateur zoologist and friend of
Reinhold's has devoted years to the quagga and has followed the
project. "People seem to think that because DNA was extracted from a
quagga, they can build a new quagga for the DNA. No-one has ever
attempted to do this and no-one has even suggested it. There are no
test tubes, there's no glass, there are no white coated people
about. These are wild animals breeding together."
The Quagga Project has grown rapidly. Eleven years ago, Reinhold
selected nine zebras from over 2,500, now there are fifty-three.
Male zebras take four or five years to reach sexual maturity so
breeding them takes time. The youngest animals are only the
grandchildren of the original nine. But Reinhold is pleased with the
progress and David Barnaby shares his confidence "Certainly, there
are clear markers that the project is making progress. The foals
that are born now are browner, less striped and altogether more
quagga like."
But Reinhold has a further ambition, to take the animals back to
the quaggas’ homeland on the plains of the Karoo and finally make
amends for their destruction. This year, David joined Reinhold in
South Africa, to restore the first of the zebra group to Karoo. It
was a hot, tense 1,000 km journey to the Karoo National Park.
Reinhold knows and cares deeply about each of the animals and
tranquilising and moving them is nerve-racking for all involved.
A mere forty-five minutes after arrival, the three quaggas
were calm enough to be released into the wild. It was what David had
travelled the world to see. "Quaggas coming home is a good phrase to
describe this moment. It's a great privilege to see these animals
step onto this dusty earth again. It is a historically significant
emotional moment and of all the animals that should be introduced
onto that land, the Quagga Project zebras are probably the most
suitable of all existing animals to be there, and now they are
there."
It was the first of many journeys, all towards an incredible end.
The animals will be the only zebras in the Karoo National Park, only
breeding within their elite group. No-one knows when an animal
matching one of the preserved quaggas will be born, but Reinhold
believes it will happen. For now, the Quagga Project continues in
its natural, historic setting.
For more information:
Contacts:
Quagga Project
South African
Museum
Queen Victoria Street
Cape Town
P.O. Box
61
8000 Cape Town
South Africa
Further Reading:
Quaggas and other Zebras David
Barnaby
Basset Publications
18 Pasley
Street
Stoke
Plymouth PL2 1DP
England
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