Not In My Backyard...

It's one thing to appreciate and protect the grizzly bear as an American icon. It's another thing when a giant brown predator with those big teeth and those big claws shows up in your backyard looking for a snack.

That's what's happening in parts of the West, and a battle is brewing to do something about it. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.

When the bear population was teetering on extinction, the grizzly was put on the endangered species list -- large areas of the West were set aside as protected zones, and killing a grizzly was declared against the law.

Guess what? It worked, almost too well in some places. Now there are so many grizzlies that later this month, the government will propose that the bears from the so-called "Yellowstone Zone," which covers parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, be "de-listed," and taken off the endangered list.

Tourists in Yellowstone National Park are wild about grizzlies. When they spot one, there's an instant and massive traffic tie-up – what the park calls a "bear jam."

Dr. Chuck Schwartz, head of the federal government's grizzly bear study team, says the bear population in the park has rebounded from 200 to 600. Yellowstone is full of grizzlies, so full they are spilling out of their protected zone and into the rural communities that surround it: Places like Wapiti, Wyo., near Cody, where fascination with grizzlies has turned into fear.

"I was afraid to let my kids out of my sight," says Amber Oswald, who moved with her family from California eight years ago. They built their dream house along a creek in Wapiti. "I was sitting there one day with a gal from the parent-teacher group. And she looks out the window and she says, 'There's a bear in your playhouse.'"

The bear, she says, was literally in her backyard. The grizzlies came even closer: One right onto her back porch, chewing on her hot tub, wrestling with the barbecue. Another bear did some real damage. "It actually ripped the siding off of my house trying to get into the garage," says Oswald. "And that was scary."

Grizzlies are a nearly constant presence in Wapiti from March to November, the eight months they spend out of their dens. They're crossing the roads like any other pedestrian, and sniffing around homes for food. Soon after a bear-proof fence went up around the school playground, a bear slammed into it, and ran off. Many residents say they came here to be close to the wildlife, but not this close…

"My worst fear would be that -- to see a bear running away with my little Claire in his mouth," says Oswald.

"Telling you that they haven't killed anybody in these kinds of communities is not comforting enough?" asks Stahl.

"Not when you hear about people getting their scalps sewed back on, and things like that," says Oswald.

People in the region are attacked by grizzlies every year – mostly hunters and hikers. Eight were attacked last summer alone.

Oswald's father tried to scare one grizzly out of their yard -- a grizzly that was totally unfazed, even when showered with a pair of boots. The bear barely budged.

If Oswald's father had shot it, he could have gone to jail.

The same is true for cattleman Curt Bales, manager of the TE Ranch outside Cody, if he had shot any of the grizzlies that have killed several of his cattle each year.

With more grizzlies invading private property, Bales chafes under the limits of the Endangered Species Act, which allows him to protect himself from grizzlies but not his cattle. He says the feds have let the bear population get out of hand.

"There's only room for so many out there in this area. And the food source is only going to support so many. It'd be like us putting 1,000 head of cows into a pasture that may only feed 500 head," says Bales.

Are there too many grizzlies in the area? "I think there are too many in this area, yes," says Bales.

But as long as the grizzly is on the endangered list, the only thing Bales can do if he sees a grizzly attacking a calf is call biologist Mark Bruscino, who runs the "human bear conflict" program at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

On the day we visited, Bruscino was called to Wapiti after a big male grizzly was seen hanging around the neighborhood. Apparently attracted by a newly fertilized lawn, the bear wouldn't leave despite barking dogs and passing cars. Faced with such brazen behavior, Bruscino decided to try and trap him.

"What we've learned is if they stick around long enough through these rural subdivisions they will find something. They'll find garbage. They'll find a chicken coop," says Bruscino.

"Here's what I find kind of astonishing," says Stahl. "That there are still people who leave their garbage out. How is that possible?"

"The only way I can put it is some people just don't get it," says Bruscino.

Grizzlies can smell food from miles away, and "food" can mean something as innocent as the seed in a bird feeder or as tempting as an unlocked dumpster.

Part of Bruscino's job is to convince nervous Wapiti residents to give up things that the bears like. One family is visited by grizzlies every year, right around the time that their apple tree bears fruit. He's not asking anyone to cut down their apple tree, but says that "if they would like to cut it down, it wouldn't bother me."

Bruscino tries to scare off the bears with so-called cracker guns, which are basically harmless. He also traps and removes dozens of bears, but once they have found food, they keep coming back, endangering people. And then they have to be destroyed by lethal injection.

"If people here did absolutely every single thing you asked, no apple trees, and covered up everything, and locked up everything, would you still have bear problems?" asks Stahl.

"Probably," says Bruscino. "Any place where there's this many bears, and this many people trying to share the same landscape, I think you're going to have problems."

"Our question around here is, 'How many grizzlies are enough?'" asks rancher Tim French, a commissioner in Park County, where Wapati is located. "Do you want 300? Do you want 1,000? What do you want?"

French says it's time to take the Yellowstone grizzly off the endangered species list, which would return control of the bear to the states.

"I am worried somebody's going to get killed," says French.

"We've been told that outside the park no one in the state of Wyoming has been killed by a grizzly bear in 100 years," says Stahl.

"My response to that is, and I don't mean to be flippant, but, so?" says French. "It doesn't mean it's not going to happen, that it's not coming."

What will "de-listing" do to change things, so this won't happen? "I think once they're 'de-listed,' the opportunity, and some people aren't going to like this, is to hunt them, possibly," says French. " Well, they're so used to people now and nobody shooting at them that they're not afraid of people like they used to be."

All this talk about shooting grizzlies alarms Louisa Willcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We killed them, we shot them, we poisoned them, and we destroyed their habitat," says Willcox. "We have lost 99 percent of what was here in the continental United States in only a few hundred years -- and this is one place where they're still here."

She's worried about the states taking over: All three have already drafted plans for hunting, and four counties in Wyoming have passed anti-bear resolutions. One calls grizzly bears "wild predators," that are "a constant and stressful threat to life, liberty and property."

"What that means is that they will be shot if people want to take their guns up and shoot them," says Willcox. "And we're saying as long as that is the view of that community, do we feel comfortable turning the keys of the car over to state and local officials?"

French, who voted for one of those resolutions, hopes that if local officials do get the keys to the car, they'll allow citizens a freer hand.

"So you're basically saying that you expect that de-listing will allow citizens to shoot these animals if they come onto their property," says Stahl.

"Absolutely," says French. "Why do I have to live with them in the constant fear that they might grab one of my kids or myself or my wife and kill them?"

It's not just the states that worry environmentalists. They plan to sue the federal government if it tries to take the bears off the endangered species list because, they say, the program to watch over the bears in the future is inadequate.

"We think we've got a program that's very strong," says Dr. Chris Servheen, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He's in charge of bringing back the grizzly for the last two decades – and he insists bear numbers will be closely monitored and hunting strictly limited.

Is he worried that they could, in the future, become threatened again?

"The only thing that I'm worried about that could make them threatened in the future is if the budget declines," says Servheen. "It's gonna take $3.4 million a year for all the monitoring and management of the bears and their habitat."

"If the money is there -- $3.4 million a year, every year, you're completely confident that you can keep the number of bears where it is, and maybe even let it go higher," asks Stahl.

"Yes," says Servheen.

"At some points, it seems like the bears are more important than the human beings," says Oswald. After too many run-ins with grizzlies, Oswald and her family left Wapiti and moved to a house on a paved cul-de-sac in downtown Cody.

Cattleman Curt Bales says the bears will never drive him off the ranch, but feels something has to be done.

"You have to realize that there's a place for everything, and the grizzly bear's place is not everywhere that it ever once was," says Bales. "You know, California had grizzly bears. We could put 'em back in California. It'd suit me just fine."

How about Central Park? "That would work, too," says Bales.

"You'd love to see that," says Stahl.

"We have to be realistic," says Bales. "You know, down in the suburbs of Cody is not grizzly bear habitat."

"We got in 1975 to the point that we started to see that maybe we really wanted some nature living with us successfully. So we started working on helping these animals out: bald eagles, grizzly bears, sea otters, all these animals that really needed assistance from us," says Servheen.

"And it creates somewhat of a problem, because now we have bears and people living together again. And again we, you know, we say, well, if you're going to live in a wildlife habitat, you have to do things differently. If you really don't want animals around your house, why do you live on the edge of a wildlife habitat?"