This story is a partnership between Grist and WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region.

The Environmental Protection Agency calls wetlands “biological supermarkets” for the sheer abundance of food they supply to a broad range of species. Roughly 40 percent of all plants and animals rely on wetlands for some part of their lifecycle. These ecosystems also filter drinking water, blunt the force of flooding, and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide — functions that make them critical in efforts to combat climate change. But the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers are now moving to slash federal protections for the nation’s wetlands and streams, potentially leaving millions of acres of habitat in Illinois and the Midwest vulnerable to being dug up, fille

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