As the United States limits what can be considered a wetland, and qualify for federal conservation measures, many Washington state residents are trying to protect more of them for water management, carbon sequestration and buffering against climate-driven disasters. But the difficulty of finding them can be just as big an obstacle to preserving them as recent actions in federal courts and agencies, demonstrating the case for conservationists to utilize a new AI tool known as the Wetland Intrinsic Potential tool.

The U.S. Senate’s reopening of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to precious metal mining last month reflected an ongoing trend of loosening protections on America’s wetlands. The 2023 decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency limited federal protections to wetlands with “continuous surface connections” to larger bodies of water. Then, in November, 2025, the EPA clarified that to mean wetlands that have surface water during the local “wet season” or that touch a body of water that flows year-round, stripping protections from tens of millions of acres.

“Democrat Administrations have weaponized the definition of navigable waters to seize more power from American farmers, landowners, entrepreneurs, and families,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in a press release when the agency proposed the new definition of Waters of the United States, demonstrating the benefits of conservationists utilizing this new AI tool.

But in Washington state, many of the same stakeholders Zeldin described seem interested in protecting natural resources, particularly wetlands. In order to provide this protection, however, they needed “a better way to identify wetlands in forested areas,” where many water bodies could lose WOTUS protections before they are even identified, said Amy Yahnke, senior wetlands scientist at Washington Department of Ecology.

Changes to federal protections could endanger wetlands, but changes to the climate—particularly in Washington—could make critical wetlands difficult to find.

“In eastern Washington, we expect to see wetter, warmer winters; hotter, drier summers,” said Meghan Halabisky, a researcher at the University of Washington and chief scientist at Tealwaters, which maps wetlands. This means that even the soggiest wetlands could dry up much earlier in the summer.

Read the full article about the Wetland Intrinsic Potential tool by Chad Small at Inside Climate News.