Convicted ecoterrorist Rod Coronado has been indicted in Arizona on a felony charge of conspiracy to impede or injure an officer.

Coronado, a longtime activist and spokesperson for extreme environmentalist movements, attempted to disrupt an effort by the Arizona Game and Fish Department to capture and kill mountain lions in Sabino Canyon near Tucson last March; the Forest Service had previously closed Sabino Canyon because of the threat posed by aggressive lions.  The plan was later cancelled after a public outcry.

Coronado had already been indicted on three misdemeanors charges related to the incident (trespassing on national forest land, interfering with a forest officer and violation of a special closure order).

Matthew Crozier, who like Coronado is affiliated with the ardent environmentalist group Earth First!, was arrested on December 7 and faces the same felony and misdemeanors charges. 

John Hammond Richardson, a writer for Esquire magazine who was with Coronado and Crozier in Sabino Canyon, also faces misdemeanors charges.  All three men were indicted on November 24, according to an FBI press release.

Earth First!, founded in the early 1980s, spawned the Earth Liberation Front, the most active extreme environmentalist movement in the U.S.

Coronado served three and a half years in prison for his role in the firebombing of an animal research laboratory at Michigan State University in 1992.  He frequently speaks on behalf of environmental and animal rights movements in the U.S.