07/02/2026
Illinois just became the first state in America to pass a "Rewilding Law." While Washington is stripping federal wetland protections, Illinois is trying to save 563,000 acres that are currently sitting unprotected.
In January 2026, Illinois did something no other state had done before. It passed a law that officially recognizes "rewilding" as a conservation strategy. The Illinois Rewilding Law empowers the state's Department of Natural Resources to pursue projects that restore land to its natural state, and it opens the door to reintroducing keystone species like beavers and bison. It is largely symbolic in its current form. It does not mandate specific actions, and the agency has said it has no projects planned under the law and no plans to bring back apex predators like wolves at this time. But conservation groups across the Midwest say the symbolism matters enormously, because the federal protections that used to cover Illinois wetlands are vanishing fast.
To understand why this law landed when it did, you have to look at what happened in Washington. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Sackett v. EPA, curtailing federal Clean Water Act protections to only wetlands with visible, continuous surface connections to major waterways. That single decision stripped protections from more than 118 million acres of wetlands nationwide. Then, in November 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency went further with a revised Waters of the United States rule that narrowed the scope even more.
For Illinois, the math is brutal. A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study released in September 2025 found that the state has 563,000 acres of unprotected wetlands. That is over half of all wetlands in Illinois. Robert Hirschfeld, director of water policy at the Prairie Rivers Network, estimated that since the EPA's November revision, the percentage of at-risk wetlands in the state has likely climbed to at least 67 percent.
State Representative Anna Moeller, an Elgin Democrat and the primary sponsor of the bill, said it straight. "Wetlands are hugely important for our water quality, for preventing flooding, for helping native species that are endemic to those areas. Once we lose them, they are gone forever."
The Rewilding Law itself is the first step. Moeller and other legislators are now pushing the Wetlands Protection Act, which would give the Department of Natural Resources actual permitting authority over wetland destruction on private land before construction begins. Paul Botts, president of the Wetlands Initiative, explained that the proposed legislation would operate on a "no-net-loss" principle. If a developer wants to remove a wetland, they would have to contribute to a mitigation bank that funds restoration elsewhere.
Botts said the bill is not going further than what existed before the federal rollbacks. "It is simply bringing it back."
Here is why that matters in real terms. Illinois has already lost more than 90 percent of its original wetlands. The ones that remain act like natural sponges. They absorb floodwater, filter pollutants, recharge groundwater, and provide habitat for species that do not exist anywhere else. Lindsay Keeney, conservation director at the Illinois Environmental Council, noted that restoring native ecosystems helps the state weather more extreme and frequent flood events. "When we see removal of wetlands and native prairies, that is where we see incredible flood damage, stormwater runoff and backup and a lot of damage to homes and human life and major flood events, which we are seeing more and more of with climate change."
The rewilding concept is already playing out in several places across the state. At Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Joliet, the Wetlands Initiative partnered with the U.S. Forest Service to restore prairies, reduce nitrate pollution, and reintroduce bison to support healthy grassland ecosystems. Midewin is now the largest prairie restoration east of the Mississippi. At the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge in Putnam County, similar work has focused on restoring wetlands and improving habitat for migratory birds.
The law went into effect at the start of 2026. What happens next depends on whether the Wetlands Protection Act passes, and whether Illinois can reclaim its old reputation as a conservation pioneer. The state invented the modern forest preserve system with the creation of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Advocates say that legacy should guide what comes next.
