A federal judge ordered the Bureau of Land Management this week to place the needs of sage grouse above the needs of cattle ranchers.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill of Boise ruled the agency did not do that when it renewed five grazing permits in Owyhee County even though it said the area was important sage grouse habitat. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit by Western Watersheds Project, filed by Advocates for the West.

What makes Winmill’s latest decision so interesting is it comes as the BLM says it is trying to place the interests of sage grouse above other uses in the most important habitat areas. It is trying to do this in the next couple of years in an effort to prevent a listing of the sage grouse that would give it no flexibility.

Winmill and Western Watersheds has forced the federal government to protect sage grouse and the millions of acres of sagebrush steppe where they live. In 2007, he ordered the agency to review its 2004 decision not to list because the Bush administration played with the science.

That led to a 2010 decision that listing of the two-foot tall bird as a threatened species was warranted but not as high a priority as protecting other species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing that decision, giving the BLM, western states, ranchers and energy developers time to put in place “regulatory mechanisms” that will keep sage grouse off the list.

They have until 2015, a date the agency set and Winmill did not challenge in a separate decision he made the week before. The BLM put in place an interim policy in December aimed at protecting the sage grouse until then.

But as this Feb 7 decision shows, some ranchers may have to make changes earlier than that. And everyone may have to make more changes than the interim policy requires.

Idaho’s BLM has rated livestock grazing as one of the top four threats to the grouse behind fire, infrastructure and grasslands conversion. Winmill’s latest decision will require the agency to go back and put new restrictions on grazing in the Owyhee County permits and perhaps hundreds of others that have been pending for years.

Most of all Winmill has shown that in the end, he or perhaps an appeals court panel or the Supreme Court will decide whether agencies’ protection plans in 2015 are enough.

Then if Winmill rules they aren’t, we will see if Congress decides to weigh in like it did with wolves.