This is a saltmarsh sparrow, an Endangered species of bird that builds its nest in its eponymous habitat.

A collaboration of citizen scientists working in Jacob’s Point salt marsh in Rhode Island is attempting to save the animal—which they believe will go extinct by mid-century—from drowning in the marsh.

In a state of nature untouched by man, these birds would build their nests in higher-elevation marshes where the threat of flooding was rare. But coastal development over the last 200 years has seen most of the higher-lying marsh cleared, forcing the sparrows to move to lower-lying marshes like Jacob’s Point that are routinely flooded by high tides.

The citizen scientists, under the moniker Needle in a Haystack Society , have for the last 10 years conducted a monitoring/intervention

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