 As it was easy to find and kill , the quagga was hunted by early Dutch settlers and later by Afrikaners to provide meat or for their skins . The skins were traded or used locally . The quagga was probably vulnerable to extinction due to its limited distribution , and it may have competed with domestic livestock for forage . The quagga had disappeared from much of its range by the 1850s . The last population in the wild , in the Orange Free State , was extirpated in the late 1870s . The last known wild individual died in 1878 . 
