Wetlands and ephemeral streams provide a wide variety of benefits to people and wildlife, from flood protection for local communities, to preventing pollutants from entering the water supply, to breeding grounds for endangered bird species. Wetlands can also act as carbon sinks, sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. … But all that changed with a May 2023 ruling by the Supreme Court called Sackett v. The Environmental Protection Agency, which rewrote the legal definition of wetlands and suddenly left many of these bodies of water unprotected, according to a new study from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).