If you live in the southern Yukon, you have probably seen more than one or two coyotes this winter. They are a fairly common sight right now, padding across frozen rivers, standing by roadsides, and occasionally nabbing pets in people's backyards.

Life is not so easy for coyotes right now. Like many of the animals in the boreal forest, their populations rise and fall in a roughly ten-year cycle, all linked to the number of snowshoe hares hopping through the forest. And right now the number of snowshoe hares is pretty close to rock-bottom.

Long-term studies in the Kluane area have found that the numbers of coyotes can increase five-fold, and then decrease again, all following the hare cycle. Coyotes have smaller litters when there are fewer hares around, and might stop reproducing altogether if times are really lean.

But above all, coyotes are versatile, and an animal as smart and adaptable as a coyote is not going to starve quietly out in the woods when there is food to be had in town.

Conservation officers are on the front lines for dealing with complaints about these animals. During his years working as a conservation officer, Kris Gustafson noticed the link between complaints about coyotes and hare populations.

"In periods of low food availability, they end up in town more. There is nothing to prove it, but over the last 20 years that seems to be the case," says Gustafson, now a special services officer with the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources.

When hares last bottomed out in 1992 and 1993, coyotes attacked people in the Whitehorse area in three separate incidents. A woman was bitten on the leg while walking across the soccer field at F.H. Collins, and coyotes attacked children in two separate incidents in Porter Creek.

Gustafson has noticed a fair number of coyotes around Whitehorse right now, and he urges people not to create problems by leaving out garbage or even feeding these animals.

"If you feed them, it is like signing a death warrant for them. If a coyote becomes habituated to people, we will have to destroy it if it is causing problems."

Gustafson grew up in Whitehorse, and remembers seeing lots of foxes around town in the 1960s, but he does not remember ever seeing a coyote. These wily animals are relative newcomers to the territory.

Two reports published in 1916 about Yukon wildlife make no mention at all of coyotes. But by the early 1920s, they are mentioned in RCMP patrol reports, and by 1929 there was a bounty on them in the territory.

Mark O'Donoghue, now the regional biologist in Mayo, studied coyotes for years while working with the Kluane Boreal Forest Ecosystem Project. He says that coyotes have been expanding their range everywhere in North America.

"They follow people. They are very good at living off of people. They have even made it across to Newfoundland."

Coyotes are not fussy eaters, and that has been one of the main keys to their wide-ranging success. In North American, coyotes are known to feed on everything from berries to white-tailed deer. In the Yukon, they will even kill larger prey such as Dall sheep.

One study showed coyotes to be the most important predator of sheep on Sheep Mountain near Kluane. As the sheep population has increased there over the last 15 years, coyotes are not thought to be limiting numbers.

O'Donoghue wrote a booklet titled "Coyotes in the Yukon" while the wolf control program was taking place in the Aishihik area. Some people in the area had concerns that the number of coyotes might increase as wolf numbers went down.

There is no clear evidence showing a link between numbers of coyotes and of wolves in an area, though the lives of these animals are interconnected. While coyotes usually steer clear of wolves as they can end up as prey of these larger predators, coyotes also benefit from carrion left behind from wolf kills.

The relationship between red foxes and coyotes is more clear-cut; when coyotes move into an area, the foxes move out. In the Kluane Lake region, most foxes stick to the alpine areas above treeline, away from the forested areas where coyotes live.

Deep snow is one of the few obstacles that can stop coyotes in their tracks, and O'Donoghue noticed the low numbers of coyotes when he moved from the Kluane area to Mayo in the central Yukon.

"The snow is deeper and softer here than in the southern Yukon, so it has been interesting moving up here. Coyotes were everywhere in the southern Yukon, but here it is the opposite; there are foxes running all over, but not many coyotes."

Conservation officer Kevin Bowers has noticed that the number of complaints about coyotes in Whitehorse has been tapering off since Christmas. He thinks that some calls come from people who expect coyotes to be afraid of humans, and advises people to remember that coyotes have co-existed with people for a very long time.

"Sometimes people get alarmed when coyotes do not run away from them, and they think there must be something wrong with them. But the coyote's point of view is, 'Hey, I have been eking a living out here for quite awhile, and I am just used to you.'"

For more information on coyotes, the brochure on "Coyotes in the Yukon" is available at the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources, or the conservation officers in Whitehorse can be contacted at 667-5221. Mark O'Donoghue can be reached at mark.odonoghue@gov.yk.ca or (867) 996-2162.