Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 08/01) - Yellowknife's airport is attracting some unusual visitors to the North this summer.

In the past month, airport safety personnel and wildlife officers have witnessed a single white-tailed deer and pair of breeding coyotes with two pups occupying the woods and fields adjacent to the airport.

Neither animal is considered to be a normal resident of the North Slave region. Both are more commonly associated with prairie fields and hilly plateaus south of the NWT border.

But according to the manager of safety and security at the airport, Bob Webber, a coyote sighting was confirmed July 9, followed by a single deer a few days later.

"Actually, a coyote was first sighted last summer, but the guy who saw it, everybody just laughed at him because we didn't think there were any coyotes up here," says Webber.

A visit from Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development officers confirmed that there were coyotes in the area, and both departments began monitoring the situation closely to ensure the animals were not posing a threat to aircraft landing and taking off from the airport.

"Coyotes are generally not a high risk at the airport," says Webber, who says the biggest worry for airport safety personnel are birds feeding in the grasses along the runways.

A small animal making contact with a speeding plane could lead to expensive repair bills and possibly even disastrous consequences, says Webber.

For now, Webber says airport personnel are doing their best to keep the coyotes as far away as possible from the runway with regular patrols equipped with scare pistols.

The deer was sighted only once and is no longer believed to be in the area.

Wildlife biologist Dean Cluff says although deer and coyotes are not common this far North, there have been sighting before -- one going back as far as 1967.

"There's been a few cases, but it's exceedingly rare," says Cluff. "A trapper saw one (a coyote) by the Giant Mine dump in 1967, and another coyote was caught in a lynx trap by Hearne Lake."

Last winter, two white-tailed deer were shot near Rae-Edzo. According to Cluff, the coyotes at the airport are the first breeding pair documented north of Great Slave Lake.

Coyotes are distinguishable by the black, saddle-shaped markings on the back of their normally reddish-brown coats. They are about the same weight as a medium sized dog -- about 15-20 kilograms.

White-tailed deer are approximately 50-60 kilograms in weight, and are most recognizable by their calling card, a white tail that sticks straight up in the air when frightened.

Cluff says expanding agricultural zones to the south have opened a corridor for game not commonly associated with the boreal forests of the North Slave region.

"The airport is an attractive place because it has open areas where they (coyotes) can feed," Cluff explains.

"They're mostly eating small mammals."