Not In My Backyard...

Lesley Stahl Reports On The Growing Grizzly Bear Population Out West

(CBS)  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?"