BOISE, Idaho - In a ruling that harshly criticized the Bureau of Land Management, a federal judge on Friday blocked the agency's new grazing rules, saying it had given in to pressure from the livestock industry.

The BLM violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in creating the rules, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled.

Winmill's 52-age ruling said the BLM's rule revisions would have loosened restrictions on grazing on millions of acres of public land nationwide, limited the amount of public comment the BLM had to consider and diluted the BLM's authority to sanction ranchers for grazing violations.

"While the BLM justifies the changes as making it more efficient, the BLM was not their originator - it was the grazing industry and its supporters that first proposed them," Winmill wrote.

"Past BLM regulations imposed restrictions on grazing and increased the opportunities for public input to reverse decades of grazing damage to public lands," Winmill wrote. "Without any showing of improvement, the new BLM regulations loosen restrictions on grazing.

"They limit public input from the non-ranching public, offer ranchers more rights on BLM land, restrict the BLM's monitoring of grazing damage, extend the deadlines for corrective action, and dilute the BLM's authority to sanction ranchers for grazing violations."

He ruled in a lawsuit brought two years ago by the environmental group Western Watersheds Project to challenge the revisions.

"The judge saw it for what it was, which was BLM's efforts to ignore its own scientists, freeze out the public and transfer ownership of public resources to the livestock industry - all of which would cause pernicious effects on threatened and endangered species," said Todd Tucci, an attorney representing Western Watershed Project.

Erik Molvar, executive director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, said Wyoming rangelands and wildlife have benefited in the past from public involvement in NEPA reviews of BLM grazing plans.

"I don't see it as an imposition," Molvar said.

Matt Spangler, a BLM spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the agency had just received the ruling and could not yet comment. Andrew Anes, spokesman for the Department of Justice, also said the decision was under review and that he could not comment.

Many of the revisions in the grazing rules were contrary to the findings of a team of BLM scientists who reviewed the environmental impact of the rules. The scientists found that the new regulations would have a slow but long-term effect on wildlife and biological diversity and that they would harm upland and riparian habitats.

The scientists concluded that the changes would have a "very long-lasting adverse effect to the wildlife of the public lands of the West."

But BLM officials then created a separate team of employees to review the scientists' report, Winmill said, and those employees deleted or softened the scientists' findings in the BLM's draft environmental impact statement.

Winmill also found fault with the rules themselves. The BLM reduced the number of interested parties that would be given notice of grazing allotment issues, and stopped consulting, cooperating and coordinating with the interested public at all on several types of allotment changes.

"The changes substantially affect both the amount and quality of public input," Winmill said.

The rules would have allowed the agency to rely only on limited data when reviewing potential grazing problems, and stretched the time given to address those problems to up to three years.

While the BLM is "reluctant to convict cattle of grazing damage, the BLM is not hesitant to acquit," Winmill said. "The BLM never explains that distinction."

The judge said the revised regulations will not take effect until the BLM receives consultation from the Fish and Wildlife Service as required under the Endangered Species Act and takes a hard look at the potential environmental impacts of the grazing changes.

"The BLM is changing course here," Winmill said. "While the 1995 regulations erected protections against grazing damage and guarded against delay, the revisions at issue here promote delay."

The bureau must explain itself so the public and lawmakers can determine if that change in course is acceptable, Winmill said.

Star-Tribune correspondent Brodie Farquhar contributed to this report.