‘A little bit of joy’: can tiny rafts save endangered sparrows from rising seas?

Deirdre Robinson in the salt marshes near Warren, Rhode Island, as seen in the new Guardian film Between Moon Tides. The state has lost half of its coastal wetlands in the past 200 years, leading to an 87% decline of saltmarsh sparrows (Ammodramus caudacutus) since 1998 Photograph: Jason Jaacks/The Guardian

Knee-deep in water, the young man lifts his arms. His wrists are grabbed, next his ankles, then he feels himself flying through the air, nearly horizontal, before plunging into New England’s pungent tidal waters.

Grinning and still dripping, he receives a homemade certificate documenting his induction into the Needle in a Haystack Society.