Montana won’t lose any acres or protections for its current national monuments, and the state may also get a brand-new 200-square-mile national monument. Zinke recommended the massive Badger-Two Medicine area in northwest Montana be designated as a national monument over the summer. But in a memorandum obtained by The Washington Post in September, Zinke advised Trump to modify 10 national monuments, including shrinking at least four in Western states and dropping drilling protections for others. The other site in Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, includes some of the most important dinosaur fossil sites in the world. Trump is expected to announce his decision concerning the national monuments in December.

Source: Huffington Post November 27, 2017 05:58 UTC