What are arguments fo and against the quagga project?

Answer 1

While the project is progressing well, there are still those who have certain reservations or are outright against the project.

It has been argued that there might have been other non-morphological, genetically-coded features (such as habitat adaptations) unique to the Quagga and that therefore, any animal produced by a selective breeding programme would not be a genuine Quagga. Since there is no direct evidence for such characters and since it would be impossible now to demonstrate such characters were they to exist, the argument is spurious. The definition of the Quagga can only rest on its well-described morphological characteristics and, if an animal is obtained that possesses these characters, then by definition, it will be a Quagga.

The genetic basis of the Quagga Breeding Project, relies on the demonstration by Higuchi et al (1987) (Mitochondrial DNA of the Extinct Quagga: Relatedness and Extent of Postmortem Change. Journel of Molecular Evolution 25:283-287) that the mitochondrial DNA of the Quagga is identical to that of other Plains Zebras. Therefore the Quagga and other Plains Zebras belong to the same species and consequently the Quagga should be considered merely a different population (or deme), of the Plains Zebra.

The only characters that have been used to identify the Quagga are its coat-pattern characters. Therefore if, within a few generations of selective breeding, an animal demonstrating these characters is obtained, it can with full justification be claimed to be a Quagga, since it would possess the same assemblage of coat-pattern genes as the original Quagga. It would not be a "look-alike".

Futhermore, since the indigenous grasses in the original habitat of the Quagga are not significantly different from those areas occupied by extant Plains Zebras, and since extant Plains Zebras occupy habitats of similar degree of aridity to those of the Quagga, there is no sound reason for proposing significant adaptive features of the Quagga to its original habitat, and no reason to believe that animals produced in the selective breeding programme would not survive successfully in the region formerly occupied by the Quagga.