For more than 10 years, Propark Adventure Race has been more than a sports competition for us. It has been a living laboratory, where we learned how outdoor sport can become a real tool for protected area management.

We have seen competitors who entered the race simply as athletes and came out as people with a deeper understanding of the value of a protected area. We have seen rangers, specialists, and administration teams discover that they can tell the story of their place in ways that no information panel can replace.

In 2026, this experience moved forward in a place with a strong identity and an impressive conservation story: Vânători Neamț Natural Park, the land where the bison was reintroduced into the wild.

Between 19 and 21 June 2026, the first edition of Bison Adventure Race took place here: an adventure race built on the model of Propark Adventure Race, but carried forward with its own identity, its own stories, and its own soul by the team of Vânători Neamț Natural Park.

From Sports Competition to Educational Experience

Propark’s role in this edition was one of mentoring. We supported the team of Romsilva – Vânători Neamț Natural Park with the know-how accumulated over 10 editions of Propark Adventure Race: how to design a route that highlights the natural and cultural values of a park, how to involve rangers and administration specialists, and how to shape each challenge so that it also becomes a memorable lesson about the place you are crossing.

For us, this is responsible visitor management: not only rules, trails, and information points, but experiences that educate. Intense, carefully designed experiences through which people come to feel a place, understand it, and return home with a protected area in their hearts.

An adventure race in nature does not bring only athletes into a park. It brings people who discover a territory through their own effort, through collaboration, orientation, fatigue, team decisions, and direct contact with nature. And this form of closeness can create a stronger connection than any message communicated from a distance.

50 Hours in Ținutul Zimbrului

Bison Adventure Race meant 250 kilometres, 50 hours, 17 checkpoints, and mixed teams of four people crossing forests, waters, night routes, and areas of high natural and cultural value. Eight teams took part in the competition, many of them made up of people who had already experienced Propark Adventure Race and returned for a new challenge in a new place.

Three teams managed to reach all 17 checkpoints: Cheile Turzii, Piatra Craiului Grind Junior, and Grădina Zmeilor. The other teams carried through Ținutul Zimbrului the names of protected areas from across the country: Pădurea celor Două Veverițe, Someșul Inferior, Scaunul Domnului, Munții Măcinului, and Deniz Tepe.

But beyond kilometres, times, and rankings, what mattered most was the way the route managed to tell the story of the place. The special challenges spoke about the bison as a “forester” of the forest, about salt extracted from Izvorul Slatina using methods thousands of years old, and about history brought back to life at the foot of Neamț Fortress.

In this way, the competition was not only a test of physical endurance. It was an encounter with nature, local heritage, and the work of the people who manage this protected area.

A Model That Can Be Taken Further

For Propark, one of the greatest joys of this edition was seeing that what we have built over more than 10 years can live on without us being at the forefront.

Bison Adventure Race showed that the format of an adventure race in protected areas can be taken over, adapted, and transformed by a park administration into its own tool for communication, education, and connecting with the public.

This is, in fact, the essence of mentoring: not to control a model, but to pass it on well enough for others to use it with meaning, responsibility, and creativity.

We congratulate the Administration of Vânători Neamț Natural Park, the volunteers, partners, and everyone who made the first edition of Bison Adventure Race possible. It was an edition that showed that sport can build bridges between people and nature, between protected area administrations and communities, between physical effort and a deep understanding of a place.

Sport as a Bridge Between People and Nature

In 2026, Propark supports and mentors the organising teams of two outdoor adventure sports competitions: Bison Adventure Race, organised in Vânători Neamț Natural Park, and Adventure in Wild Vrancea, organised in Putna Vrancea Natural Park.

We see them as living forms of responsible protected area management, through which people learn to respect, understand, and connect with nature. In such experiences, competitors become not only participants in a race, but ambassadors of the protected areas they pass through.

Bison Adventure Race is made possible through the “Green for the Future” programme, funded by the OMV Petrom Foundation and developed together with the Civil Society Development Foundation. The project is implemented by the Romanian Ecotourism Association – Discover Eco-Romania, in partnership with RNP Romsilva – Vânători Neamț Natural Park, Mioritics Association, and the Association for the Conservation of Biological Diversity.

For us, this first edition confirmed once again something we have learned throughout all the years of Propark Adventure Race: a well-designed adventure never truly ends. It continues in the people who crossed the place, in the team that prepared it, and in the way the protected area remains, long after the finish line, in the memory of those who came to know it.