FRESNO, Calif. -- The president of the California Fish and Game Commission, who sparked the ire of animal rights groups when he hunted and killed a mountain lion in Idaho in an act prohibited in his home state, was unanimously voted out of his position on Wednesday. 

All five members of the Commission, including ousted President Dan Richards, voted to appoint another president effective immediately although Richards will remain a member of the group until his term expires in January, a commission staff member said.

---

Controversy began when Richards killed a mountain lion in Idaho earlier this year in a legal hunt and a photo of him with the dead animal was posted on the Internet. Idaho Fish and Game officials said he legally purchased a hunting license.

Read the full story on NBC affiliate KCRA.com

"I was fully aware today would be my last day as the president," Richards said after a unanimous vote to replace him with member Jim Kellogg.

The Sierra Club of California, the Humane Society, and others decried the kill and called for Richards' resignation, noting that hunting mountain lions has been illegal in California for more than two decades. 

'Specially protected species'
California voters passed a ballot measure in 1990 that classified mountain lions in the state as a "specially protected species," making them illegal to hunt or kill. 

Calif. wildlife official defiant after photo surfaces of him with slain puma

"Californians have twice voted in a resounding fashion to protect mountain lions in our state, and his flagrant flaunting of his disagreement with the electorate put him out of sync with California," said Jennifer Fearing, state director of the Humane Society of the United States. "We're glad to see the commission take action."

Critics, including animal welfare groups, said the commission chief should uphold the values of the state he represents. Hunting groups defended Richards.

Mountain lion shot, killed after prowling Santa Monica shopping mall

Richards also came under fire for accepting the $7,000 hunting trip without paying any of the cost. He repaid the hunting lodge after an ethics complaint was filed.

In the wake of the controversy, the commission changed rules that give the presidency to the most senior member of the commission and instead chose to have the president selected by majority vote.

NBC Los Angeles: Lion-killer comments will sink Richards

He told the San Jose Mercury News during a recent interview that he broke no wildlife laws.

"There's no chance I did anything wrong," Richards said. "I did everything by the book."

NBC News staff, KCRA.com and Reuters contributed to this report.

More content from NBCNews.com:

• FBI: Sikh temple gunman killed himself after being wounded by police
• July is hottest month on record; drought expands across US
• Obama opposes Boy Scouts' policy banning gays
• Sailor sentenced for helping Navy chief commit suicide
• August is heaviest homecoming month for Marines in Afghanistan
• Body found on Mount Rainier could have been missing since January
• Video: Police believe body is missing La. college student

Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

A mountain lion that scientists believe to be one of perhaps just a dozen left in the Santa Monica mountains was shot and killed by authorities after it appeared in a high-end shopping mall in Santa Monica on Tuesday morning, an official with the California Department of Fish and Game told msnbc.com.

Authorities initially tried but failed to subdue the cat, a 3-year old male weighing about 80 pounds that apparently wandered into the city overnight.

"This was an unprecedented event," Fish and Game Department spokesman Andrew Hughan said of the lion’s appearance in central Santa Monica. "We do have lion in urban areas, but they are usually small towns. Never anything like this that anyone can recall."

A maintenance worker at The Promenade spotted the large cat around 6:00 a.m. PT as cleaners were preparing the outdoor mall for opening and reported it to police, who in turn informed Fish and Game wardens.

---

A warden and first responders from the police and fire departments converged on the mall and found the animal in a u-shaped courtyard," said Hughan.

"It was trapped in a little enclosed area," he said. "What wildlife will do is lie down like they do in the woods, trying to hide."

After setting up a perimeter, police shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart, with the intent of removing it and returning it to its natural habitat, Hughan said. Before the tranquilizer could take effect, they tried to keep the agitated animal trapped using "pepper balls" and fire hoses.

A news release from the Santa Monica Police Department said: "The mountain lion made several attempts to escape the courtyard and enter the public area. Regrettably, police were forced to use lethal force to prevent that animal from escaping the courtyard and endangering the public."

An officer killed the mountain lion with a single shot, a move that had the full support of Fish and Game, said Hughan.

Watch the Top Videos on msnbc.com

"This was an absolute last resort. No one at Fish and Game wants to destroy an animal, especially a mountain lion," he said.

The far-ranging mountain lion population is under severe stress due to habitat loss and poaching, scientists say.

For a decade, the National Park Service has been tracking mountain lions in southern California, including the 275-square miles of the Santa Monica range, which is hemmed in by highways, urban areas, the ocean and agricultural land.

Wanted: Poacher who cut off cougar's paws

That island of habitat is large enough to support 10 to 15 mountain lions, according to Jeff Sikich, a biologist with the project.

Young adult males are forced to set out to establish their own territory, or reckon with a dominant male in the area, he said.

"Most young adult males we have followed in the Santa Monica mountains have ended up getting killed on a freeway or by an adult male in that territory," Sikich said.

The park service is conducting genetic tests to determine whether the mountain lion killed on Tuesday is a part of the tiny Santa Monica population, which Sikich says is likely.

"This is regrettable," said Tim Dunbar, executive director of the nonprofit conservation group Mountain Lion Foundation. "By having this poor lion die now … that will put even more pressure on the survivability of the species down there."

Dunbar said the Sacramento-based foundation had dispatched staff to Santa Monica to investigate the animal’s death, but did not yet have an opinion about the decision to use lethal force.

"Part of the problem is that the tranquilizers for the animals act a little slower if the animal is agitated," said Dunbar. "From reports I’ve heard, this animal was highly agitated."

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• 'Lucky' teen plucked from waterfall credits rescuers, Pendragon book
• Motorcycle deaths stay at same level despite overall safer roads
• Video: 911 dispatcher caught snoring as woman pleads for help
• Grandmother allegedly shoots grandson eight times
• Could you be sued for texting with a driver? Experts say, 'maybe'

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

Follow Kari Huus on Facebook

 

Investigators are trying to track down who cut off the paws of a 135-pound cougar found dead Wednesday morning near a California freeway.

Andrew Hughan, public information officer for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the case is being investigated as poaching. It is illegal to take body parts, he said, even if — as it appears — the animal was first killed by a car. "It’s still desecrating a specially protected species," he said.

Animal Rescue Team, the organization that helped find the mountain lion, said that the animal's genitals had also been removed. Fish and Game initially confirmed that information. They later said it was erroneous.

The mountain lion was a 2- to 3-year-old male — a teenager, in human terms, according to Hughan — when it died along a rural stretch of Highway 101, a major commuting route for Los Angeles.

---

Here’s what they know: At about 5 a.m. the California Highway Patrol received a call from a motorist who spotted a deer in a southbound lane of the highway, a few miles from the small town of Buellton, population 2,500.

When the game warden was nearing the scene, he came upon an elderly couple — tourists from Oklahoma, who had pulled off the highway in their car to capture a fawn that was wandering next to the freeway, Hughan said. He took the fawn, which was unhurt, and went to get the mountain lion.

Graphic image warning: A picture of the mountain lion can be viewed by clicking this link.

But he couldn't find the cat. It was only several hours later with the help of a wildlife rescue worker that they found the mountain lion carcass, now mutilated and discarded, well off the road.

The working theory, according to Hughan, is that the doe spotted the cougar and was trying to draw the predator away from her fawn when the cougar ran into traffic and was hit.

And then the poacher — possibly someone listening to the police scanner, he speculated — rushed to the scene with tools to salvage body parts.

Two male mountain lions were found mutilated last fall, according to Tim Dunbar, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation, a nonprofit in California. One had been shot, the other killed by a car, and both had paws and genitals removed.

The paws were probably taken to be stuffed and sold into the lucrative black market as trophies, said Stephanie Boyles Griffin, a wildlife biologist with the Humane Society of the United States.

She said poachers take mountain lion genitals to sell as ingredients for traditional medicines. Claws from the animal sometimes end up in jewelry.

"One reason it’s illegal even to take the parts of an animal that was already killed is because there’s no way to know if they were taken from an animal that was killed accidentally or intentionally by a poacher," said Boyles Griffin.

Mountain lions have been "specially protected" under California state law since 1990 and it is illegal to possess their body parts. The main species in California is not considered endangered, though it is rare. It is legally hunted in some states.

For now, information on the crime is scant.

"We’ve got a dead lion, no idea where the doe is, but the fawn is fine," said Hughan.

He’s hoping that a $2,000 reward will turn up some new information in the case.

"There’s really no hope of catching these guys unless somebody rats 'em out," said Hughan. "Money talks and hopefully the reward will go up and somebody will rat them out."

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Dad wires up autistic son, 10, to expose 'bullying' by teaching staff
• Marine who criticized President Obama on Facebook discharged
• Rodney King anniversary: 20 years after LA riots, have race relations improved?
• Supreme Court hears arguments over Arizona immigration law
• Video: Confederate flag dress gets teen banned from prom

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

Follow Kari Huus on Facebook

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The photo shows a hunter with a proud smile holding a slain, man-sized mountain lion in a snowy wilderness — a memento from a successful Idaho hunting trip that has become a political nightmare for the hunter. He is the state Fish and Game Commission president in California, where cougar killing is banned.

Since the photograph surfaced in a California hunting journal last month, Dan Richards has faced growing criticism, and animal rights activists and 40 California Democratic Assembly members have demanded that he resign from his appointed position. And on Thursday, he was hit with a complaint to the state's ethics commission that the lion hunt was an illegal freebee.

---

Defiantly defending himself, Richards has rebuffed calls to step down and has pointed out that he not only killed the cougar in Idaho, where that's legal, he ate what he shot, as good hunters do.

Richards is a Republican commercial real estate developer from San Bernardino County who unsuccessfully ran for governor during the 2003 recall election, garnering 383 votes. Richards was appointed in 2008 by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He defended his hunt in a letter to a lawmaker who had demanded his resignation.

"While I respect our Fish and Game rules and regulations, my 100-percent legal activity out of California, or anyone else's for that matter, is none of your business," Richards wrote.

In a radio interview on a conservative talk show in Los Angeles, Richards called his critics "enviro-terrorists" and has said there was "ZERO" chance he would step down from the five-member commission, which sets hunting and fishing regulations in the state.

Animal rights activists held their noses but not their tongues when Richards, a member of the National Rifle Association, said that he found that puma "doesn't taste like chicken," and likened it to pork loin.

On Thursday, the charges got more serious for Richards when a former California Democratic Party official, Kathy Bowler, filed a formal ethics complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

Citing a San Jose Mercury News story, the complaint alleges Richards accepted a $6,800 gift from the Flying B Ranch because he didn't pay the full fee normally charged to guests who go on guided mountain lion hunts. Under California law, officials can't accept gifts of more than $420 a year.

Richards did not return calls and an email from The Associated Press on Friday seeking comment.

Joseph Peterson, manager of the Flying B Ranch in Idaho where the hunting occurred, told the AP that he asked Richards to shoot the mountain lion as part of an effort to control the population there. He said Richards paid for a two-day bird hunting trip at $3,200— not for the ranch's mountain lion package, which costs $6,800.

'It was going to die anyway'
Peterson denied giving Richards a gift by not charging him for the ranch's mountain lion package too.

"It was going to die anyway. I was going to kill it. The purpose of shooting it was to reduce the population," Peterson said. "I don't do much for gifts. I'm here to turn a profit and keep people employed."

Hunting cougars, which are also called pumas or mountain lions, was banned in California in the early 1990s, though it's legal in Idaho and many other states.

The mountain lion population in the state is stable with an estimated 4,000-to-6,000 of the creatures. The big cats can only be killed by special depredation permit or to preserve public safety or to protect endangered bighorn sheep.

After the photo surfaced, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom — whose father is a former judge and past president of the Mountain Lion Preservation Foundation — questioned the wisdom of having a hunter as the head of an agency responsible for natural resources.

"Is it appropriate for the chair of the commission that oversees the management and governance of our wildlife and our fisheries and natural resources to go to another state to do something he can't do in this state?," Newsom said in a television interview.

The AP was not able to obtain permission to publish the photograph.

California has twice voted down statewide efforts to reinstate mountain lion hunting — a fact that critics say shows Richards is not suited for his post and out of step with the people.

"If Richards didn't agree with the voters' judgment to ban lion hunting, and even if lion hunting is in fact legal in Idaho, as president of the commission he should have exhibited some respect to the electorate he serves and restrained himself from killing a lion for the heck of it," Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of America, said on his blog.

Some of Richards' Republican colleagues stepped into the fray in his defense.

"Mr. Richards has not broken one law," said state Sen. Tom Harman, R-Huntington Beach, in a statement. "In the state of Idaho, it is perfectly legal to take down a mountain lion. After all, there are lots of states that don't follow California's lead on every issue."

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

• Limbaugh apologizes to student he called 'slut'
• 'Crash, bang, break' as students survive twister
• Cops searching for stolen iPads find $34 million in meth
• Man created sculptures from endangered wildlife