Of the sky
that fateful Christmas Eve and its immediate aftermath and the present day. She hopes that the continuing interest in her ordeal will lead people towards engaging with the rest of her story and learning about the conservation work to which she has dedicated her adult life.
“The combination of the past and what we are doing now is all intertwined,” she says, explaining that the tragedy that shaped her life also gave it purpose.
JULIANE’S German parents had been biologists and she had lived with them at their research station in the rainforest for part of her childhood. They had named the area Panguana, a place of extraordinary biodiversity in the foothills of the Andes. When Juliane’s father, who never fully recovered from his wife’s death, died in 2000 she and her husband took over his work, dividing their time between Munich and Peru.
Panguana has recently been declared an official nature reserve, giving her a great deal of pleasure. “In those lonely days and nights after the crash I promised myself that if I survived I would do something important. It is difficult sometimes because you do not know your destiny but these thoughts accompanied me all the time. When my husband and I took over Panguana, I recognised that it is a very important task to preserve this rainforest for its fascinating diversity of life and for our world’s climate.”
For Juliane, the accident cannot be separated from the direction her life took afterwards. The time she had spent in the rainforest with her parents meant that she was not scared of the jungle: she knew which dangerous creatures to look out for and that if she followed a small stream it would eventually lead her to a river.
“I always loved the jungle,” she says. “After the accident the press wanted to write about my time in this ‘green hell’ but it was not like that. I don’t know if my life would have taken the same path if the accident had not happened. For a while I thought of studying art or history but I am glad I chose biology. After all, it was the jungle that saved my life.”
Juliane flies several times a year and many people are curious about how she can get on an aeroplane. She says it is the only way to get to her “second home”, the rainforest she loves so much.
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