Vincenzo Penteriani, Maria del Mar Delgado, Ancuta Fedorca, Louise K. Gentle, Daniele Falcinelli, Ilpo Kojola, Samuli Heikkinen, Slavomír Find’o, Michaela Skuban, Mihai Fedorca, Ovidiu Ionescu, Georgeta Ionescu, Andrés Ordiz, Jon E. Swenson, Antonio Uzal

Connected wilderness is essential for sustaining human–wildlife coexistence and enabling species to adapt to rapidly changing landscapes. Across Europe, landscapes are increasingly reshaped by land-use change and expanding infrastructure, driven by urban encroachment and the intensification of other human activities. While these processes support economic growth and development agendas, they also lead to habitat loss and fragmentation, particularly affecting wide-ranging species such as large carnivores by restricting movement and increasing human–wildlife interactions. As a result, large carnivore populations persist in fragmented and heterogeneous environments across Europe, where local conditions strongly influence behavioural adaptability and long-term persistence. The brown bear (Ursus arctos), one of Europe’s four large carnivores, exhibits considerable behavioural plasticity in response to human activity and environmental pressures, making it an ideal model species for investigating landscape connectivity and informing conservation planning. In this study, we analysed GPS data from 93 brown bears (52 females and 41 males) across three European regions with contrasting levels of human alteration: Finnish–Russian Karelia, the Slovak Carpathians, and the Romanian Carpathians. Our objective was to identify priority areas for connectivity conservation across different socio-ecological contexts. We applied an integrated analytical framework combining state-space models, habitat selection, and landscape connectivity, and compared outcomes across regions. Preliminary findings reveal marked context-specific habitat preferences and movement patterns, highlighting the strong influence of local environmental and anthropogenic conditions on bear behaviour. These results underscore the value of behaviour-based, regionally tailored approaches for corridor planning and connectivity conservation, particularly in human-modified landscapes.