*2.1. Study Area and Study Species*

The study area in central Sweden (in Dalarna, Jämtland, and Gävleborg counties) is a rolling landscape mainly covered by boreal, coniferous forests dominated by Scots pine *Pinus sylvestris* and Norway spruce *Picea abies*. Altitudes range between 100–830 m. Human density is low, 1–7 inhabitants/km2, but the landscape is crisscrossed by many gravel roads (1 <sup>±</sup> 0.5 km/km2), because logging is a major activity [35]. Snow typically covers the ground from December to March. Wolves became functionally extinct in Scandinavia in the 1960s, but wolf recolonization and recovery started by the late 1970s [36] and continued until 2015, when the general increasing population trend stabilized [16,37]. The first wolf territories reestablished in our bear-wolf sympatric study area in 2000/2001, and afterwards between one and eight wolf territories have been detected annually [17], with a pack size of 4 ± 2 wolves (mean ± sd) for the packs included in our study. For brown bears, as few as about 130 were left in Sweden about a century ago [38], but human attitudes and legislation changed, the population recovered, and currently bear density reaches ~30 bears/1000 km<sup>2</sup> in our study area [39]. As of winter 2019–2020, there were ~450 wolves in Scandinavia, ~365 of them in Sweden [37]. The Scandinavian brown bear population consists of ~3000 bears, most of them (~2800) in Sweden [40]. Lynx and wolverines are also present, yet in low densities, in the study area. Moose is the most abundant ungulate (0.7–1.6/km2) and very low densities of roe deer *Capreolus capreolus* (0.05–0.08/km2) also occur [41].
