Dagny Lüdemann

Dagny has dreamed of becoming an animal filmmaker since she was a child. She experiences her happiest moments when she is allowed to fly over Africa’s savannahs or the Amazon rainforest in a rickety small aeroplane. Except when they are on fire, as was the case when she flew over Borneo and watched from the air as the orangutans’ last natural habitat went up in flames. She feels in her element when she looks a seahorse in the eye while diving in a healthy seagrass meadow or exploring the Arctic Circle on a dog sled in the footsteps of reindeer. Although the biology graduate loves animals, is often out in nature and has worked at a conservation centre for sea turtles, Dagny also thinks scorpions in her tent or leeches on her leg are pretty stupid and is sometimes a bit scared of catching malaria, dengue or just a cold before her excursions. You can’t dive with a cold. But as soon as she is out in nature or under water, all that is forgotten. Every time.

As a reporter and biologist, she is out and about in the wilderness for ZEIT ONLINE, where there is still unknown life on earth to be discovered: be it in the garden at home, in the jungle with gibbons or under water with sharks. She uncovers why species have to die and how humans are destroying their own environment. And more importantly: how we can stop doing so.