Not In My Backyard...

Lesley Stahl Reports On The Growing Grizzly Bear Population Out West

(CBS)  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."