Coronado later joined the radical environmentalist group
Earth First!, and the
Animal Liberation Front, an underground
animal rights group that released animals from
fur farms and
research facilities. Coronado designed and led the Animal Liberation Front's early 1990s campaign against the fur industry and its supporting research institutions, known as
Operation Bite Back. The first attack, on 10 June 1991, was arson on
Oregon State University's experimental mink farm, burning research records and leading to the facility's closure. Within a week, another attack firebombed the
Edmonds, Washington, Northwest Farm Food Cooperative, which supplied mink feed. In August, activists attacked a
Washington State University mink farm. In February 1992, Coronado and two other Animal Liberation Front activists burned a
Michigan State University mink research center, causing $200,000 in damages and incinerating 32 years of research. In 1995, Coronado was sentenced to 57 months of jail, three years probation, and a $2 million fine. Coronado had said that he was not involved in the attack apart from serving as a spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front, and took the lesser charge of aiding in the attack to avoid a trial and drop charges from other attacks. Only 25 years later did Coronado admit to being the attack's sole perpetrator. The campaign continued during his imprisonment with a focus on freeing animals rather than economic sabotage. The 1992 federal
Animal Enterprise Protection Act, which was built to protect animal-based businesses, had been crafted largely in response to Coronado. While in prison, Coronado created and wrote the magazine
Strong Hearts. Following threats of mountain lions looming in the foothills of
Tucson, the
Arizona Game and Fish Department announced a hunt within the
Sabino Canyon area on March 10, 2004. With split scientific opinion on the merit of lion relocation and ten days of protests, the department attempted to move the lions but found few tracks. The climax of the protests was Coronado's arrest, on March 24, for spreading lion scent in the park to sabotage tracking dogs. The hunt was called off four days later. Coronado, Earth First activist Matthew Crozier, and an
Esquire journalist accompanying them were charged with trespassing during an emergency order of closure and interfering with an officer. From 2006 to 2007, Coronado served eight months of a ten-month federal sentence. Amidst the backdrop of the
Green Scare, a period of federal crackdown on radical environmental and animal rights activism, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Coronado in February 2006 as part of its
Operation Backfire. Years prior, in August 2003, Coronado gave a speech in San Diego on activist rights that the FBI recorded. In response to an audience question about the Michigan State arson, Coronado used a nearby juice container to explain how the incendiary device worked. A
grand jury led to charges that Coronado demonstrated an explosive device with intent to commit a crime. Fatherhood and years of imprisonment changed Coronado's priorities. Later in 2006, before the incendiary device case went to court and while serving time for the mountain lion case, Coronado wrote an
open letter from prison renouncing violence as a means for social pressure in consideration of how legal efforts and prison time had affected his life, family, and young children. This approach was a departure for Coronado, who by now was an underground celebrity among environmental and animal rights radicals. He had become known for his illegal direct actions and longstanding public advocacy for militant tactics, with prominent recent appearances on national television (
60 Minutes in 2005) and speaking at an
American University (2003). But parenting, he wrote, makes parents "practice the very principles [they] seek to teach [their] children". The incendiary device case ended as a
mistrial with a
hung jury. He pled guilty and in March 2008 was sentenced to a year of prison in exchange for other dropped cases and to "move on with [his] life", having already committed to a changed outlook on violence. Coronado was released in 2009. The next year, a judge sent him back to prison for four months after Coronado was found to have
friended activist
Mike Roselle on
Facebook in violation of his probation. Coronado has been involved with
grey wolf conservation in the contiguous United States since 2013. He founded
Wolf Patrol, a non-profit environmental group that monitors treatment of wolves and reports illegal wolf hunting. == Personal life ==