Tucson Region

Scared of lions? So move, activist says

To Sabino Canyon-area residents who fear mountain lions roaming through their neighborhood, Rodney Coronado carried a simple message Friday, two days after his arrest on charges of disrupting a state-sanctioned lion hunt. "I'd say, move Downtown if you can't live peacefully with animals who have been here thousands of years," said Coronado, an Earth First activist who is charged with trespassing and entering a closed facility. "It's time for you to relocate, not the lions." He said he did not think his activities had increased the chances of a lion-human encounter: "I think the actions of developers and the Game and Fish Department will do more to destabilize lions than anything I did." And if he had had an encounter with a mountain lion and scaring it with shouts or stones hadn't worked, he would never have shot the cat even if he had had a gun - which he said he didn't. "I'm going to fight to defend myself, but if it's my time to go, it's my time to go," said Coronado, 37, who is part Yaqui and part Mexican-American. He was released from custody Thursday on his own recognizance, one day after he and a writer for Esquire magazine were charged with trespassing and interfering with the lion hunt. "I'd rather die in a lion attack than in a car accident, that's for sure," he said. "There's more dignity and honor dying in the wilderness as part of the food chain rather than in rush hour on Speedway." But while Coronado proclaimed his 10 hours of disruption a success, four Sabino Canyon-area residents disagreed. "He's leading these people astray and making it almost impossible for them to find these lions," said Frank Tornabene, who lives in the Miramist development southwest of Sabino Canyon. "He's costing us a lot of money. We're paying these people to look for these lions every day, aren't we?" "It's outrageous, overdoing it, it's absurd," added Tornabene's wife, Lynn, who with her husband said they saw a 4 1/2-foot-long lion in the bushes at the foot of their driveway six weeks ago. The couple said they support the hunt. Coronado deserves what the law does to him now, said canyon-area resident Phil Bentley, who opposes the hunt: "What he did, to go in there to disrupt what they're doing, there are better ways to do that without antagonizing people both for and against you. That is a selfish way to do it. His attitude is, 'Unless it's my way, it's no way.' "This is still a democracy and we still elect or appoint people to do the best job they know how to do and they are not going to satisfy everyone," said Bentley, who lives on the edge of the Coronado National Forest near Sabino Canyon Road's north end. In reply to the Tornabenes' remarks, Coronado said that if people care more about dollars than the life of a lion, his activities will definitely cost them that. To Bentley's comment, Coronado said that if democracy applied to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, "overwhelmingly this hunt would have been stopped a long time ago. Any agency only answerable to itself is an example of a failure of democracy." Coronado and a second Earth First activist spent their time in the canyon area on Wednesday dripping lion scent onto the ground and trying to disable cable-sprung traps that a federal agent placed to try to catch the lions. Coronado and writer John Richardson, of Esquire, were arrested early Wednesday afternoon. "It caused the hounds pursuing the lions to pursue a false scent, and it caused every agency in the canyon to dedicate their attention to us for one day," Coronado said of his efforts. "If the helicopter was hunting us, at least it wasn't hunting the lions." Mark Osugi, who lives near Snyder and Kolb roads south of the canyon, said he doesn't think people should take it upon themselves to disrupt Game and Fish. While Osugi said he personally opposes the hunt, he also said that Game and Fish bases its decisions on a lot more information than what the public has: "I don't think disrupting their process is the right thing for people to do. It's probably making it worse off for those animals than you're helping them." It is up to private citizens to take law into their own hands when the agencies responsible to protect the environment fail to do their duty, Coronado said: "Removing lions is something that nobody should be allowed to do.'' He said that he and his companions arrived in the canyon at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday and spent the next few hours spreading lion scent drops. He said he ordered the drops from a mail-order catalog service he found on the Web, and paid $5 a bottle. He and his Earth First companion, whom Coronado declined to identify, spread six to eight drops on the ground every 500 yards. After daybreak, the activists videotaped a state-hired helicopter that flew over the canyon for the hunt, then hiked to a point at the canyon's public closure boundary to give their video to fellow activists who were to take it to TV stations, he said. Then, they hiked back into the canyon area and dropped into Sabino Creek and shortly after they walked back to a hilltop that connects to the canyon's Phone Line Trail, at about noon or 12:30 p.m., they saw authorities spot them with binoculars, he said. Bert Seelman, a Tucson businessman and a hunter, said Coronado was acting out of emotion and was irrational: "He is more interested in his own face being in the center of attention than the actual issue. You won't find hunters going against the law to make a better case for their side." He called Coronado's release a travesty, arguing that Coronado, who served four years in prison for burning down a Michigan mink research facility in 1992, has already shown he will not pay attention to the law and has total disregard for it. Judge Glenda Edmunds conditioned Coronado's release on his agreement to not go to Sabino Canyon, leave Arizona or attend any meetings on the Sabino lion issue before his trial. Coronado said that since his release, he's told his fellow Earth Firsters, "I don't want to know what you are doing. It's not in my best interest to know anymore."