Citizen Scientists’ Makeshift ‘Coffee Filter Arks’ Help Prevent These Sparrows Chicks From Drowning

Citizen Scientists’ Makeshift ‘Coffee Filter Arks’ Help Prevent These Sparrows Chicks From Drowning

Citizen Scientists’ Makeshift ‘Coffee Filter Arks’ Help Prevent These Sparrows Chicks From Drowning Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammodramus caudacutus) at Great Bay Boulevard Wildlife Management Area – credit, Brian Henderson CC 2.0. via Flickr 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…