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The Shelley's Crimsonwing is one of the rarest finches in Africa. It inhabits the same dense Albertine Rift highland forest as the threatened Mountain Gorillas of Uganda,Rwanda and DRC of central Africa. This video clip shows how the Rare Finch Conservation Group is overcoming enormous logistical hurdles to save this bird from extinction.

For upto the minute RFCG information visit our Blog site on http://rarefinch.wordpress.com

The Rare Finch Conservation Group (RFCG) was founded in August 2005 by a group of South African and Australian finch enthusiasts who each wish to play a meaningful role in ensuring the ongoing survival in the wild of the world's finch species. The founding RFCG members are all experienced in the field of finch husbandry and wish to utilise these skills to the benefit of wild finches.

Finches (from the families Fringillidae, Estrildidae, Emberizidae, Ploceidae and Viduanae) are coming under increasing pressure in the wild, mainly due to the ongoing loss of suitable habitat and to a lesser extent the trapping of wild birds for the caged bird and scientific research markets. Sadly these minute birds are not high-profile and marketable enough to attract sufficient conservation funding and so many finch populations are simply sliding downhill while conservation entities focus their limited resources on issues like climate change, tigers and gorillas. Many of the world's finches are now under some form of immediate or medium-term threat of extinction while others are heading that way, and yet there is no cohesive plan of action to reverse that trend.

Ongoing habitat loss is something that is in the hands of governments, corporates and private landowners and hopefully humankind will reverse that process during the next decade. In the meantime though the RFCG is working away at aspects of finch conservation that can be addressed at a more practical level.

Visitors to this site are encouraged to look at the rarefinch listing page and find out more about the 77 finch species that have been classified as threatened by Birdlife International.