2 Men Indicted Over Shots Fired at Condor : Wildlife: One suspect remains at large. Authorities won’t say why charges in the July, 1992, incident weren’t issued earlier.

A federal grand jury has indicted two men for allegedly attempting to shoot one of the endangered California condors released into Los Padres National Forest as part of a $15-million project to save the birds from extinction.

Ricardo Contreras Tirado, 23, and Cesario Quinteros Campos, 32, both of Long Beach, were charged Tuesday with firing a .22-caliber rifle July 19, 1992, at the bird known as Xewe (pronounced Gay-wee), according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Patricia A. Beaman in Los Angeles.

Early Wednesday morning, U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents arrested Campos at his home. Tirado, who was also charged with being an undocumented immigrant in possession of a firearm, is still at large.

The maximum penalty for shooting at an endangered species, a misdemeanor, is up to one year in prison and a $50,000 fine. The maximum penalty for an undocumented immigrant possessing a firearm, a felony, is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Beaman refused to comment on why it took almost eight months before the men were charged in the shooting incident.

“It was under investigation--that’s all I can say,” she said. Grand jury matters are secret, she said.

Three shots were fired at Xewe as she was perched on a cliff face 300 feet above a creek bed 15 miles northeast of Fillmore. The bird, who was not injured, was flushed from her perch. The vulture, now about 2 years old, weighs about 19 pounds and has a 9-foot wing span.

As part of the condor protection program, a biological technician with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was monitoring the bird when the shots were fired. He confronted the two men and notified authorities, said Robert Mesta, the condor program coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“They had a new .22 and they were shooting at things,” Mesta said. The men were within a few hundred yards of the birds.

Beaman said she believes the men knew they were shooting at a condor, although legally it doesn’t matter whether they knew it was endangered or not, she said. She said Campos owned the gun but that both men are accused of shooting it.

She said she knew of no other prosecutions for shooting at a condor.

Xewe is one of only 63 California condors in the world, she said. The bird was one of two condors released into the Sespe Condor Sanctuary north of Fillmore in January, 1992.

The two condors were raised in captivity, pioneers in the program that scientists hope will re-establish the vultures in the wild. However, the other condor, Chocuyens (pronounced Cho-KOO-Yenz), was found dead in October. Toxicology tests confirmed that the male vulture died of kidney failure after drinking ethylene glycol, a fluid used in antifreeze.

Xewe has been joined by six more condor chicks that were released in December into the Sespe Condor Sanctuary within the national forest as part of a 12-year effort to bring the birds back from near-extinction.