Support Rod Coronado

north america / mexico | environment | other libertarian press Wednesday August 09, 2006 13:55 by Solidarity

indigenous environmentalist, rod coronado gets 8 months!

Rod Coronado was sentances to 8 months in prison for his role in a mountain lion hunt sab

This is a call to support Rod Coronado, one of our true warriors. he was done more for the planet and those of us who inhabit it than most anyone in modern history.

visit: supportrod.org

Tucson, Arizona,US - Environmental activists with the group Earth First! Rod Coronado and Matt Crozier were sentenced today for disrupting a 2004 mountain lion hunt in Sabino Canyon. The pair were convicted in December for spreading false scents and pulling up a sensor and a trap set by forest rangers. The charges are conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the United States, a felony, and misdemeanor counts of interfering with a forest officer and depredation of government property.

Coronado who served four years in prison in 1995 for another sabotage and arson case was sentenced to eight months in prison, three years supervised probation, and was ordered to pay $100 restitution. Crozier was sentenced to three years probation and 100 hours of community service and fined $1,000.

Both are barred from writing or doing interviews about animal rights or environmental activism that is deemed violent. They are also not allowed to associate with members of the civil-disobedience group Earth First! to which they belong. The prosecution and the judge agreed that the activist's disruption of the hunt was violent. Those conditions will be in effect for the duration of their probation.

Since his conviction Coronado has been indicted on other charges including a felony charge of demonstrating how to use a destructive device during a presentation he gave in San Diego that covered how he had set fire to a laboratory in 1992.

More recently he was charged with violating the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by possessing eagle feathers. Coronado is a Native-American member of the Pasqua Yaqui tribe who see eagle feathers as religious symbol on par with the Christian cross. Tribal members are legally allowed to posses feathers but Coronado apparently did not first obtain a necessary permit.