Lone Drøscher Nielsen

Who is Lone Drøscher Nielsen?

Lone Drøscher Nielsen is a wildlife conservationist. She was born and grew up in Aalborg, Denmark. She encountered her first orangutan while volunteering as a fourteen-year-old at Aalborg zoo. Later, when she was working as a flight attendant with a Scandinavian airline, Scandinavian Airlines,she volunteered for a month-long project on the Indonesian island of Borneo, and here she came into contact with orangutans again. She found she was able to cope with life without electricity or hot water deep in the jungle: "It was the forest I fell in love with at first. But my love for the orangutans soon followed."

Drøscher Nielsen saw the plight of the Bornean orangutan, a highly intelligent primate, which shares almost 97% of its DNA with humans, and which is rapidly losing its natural habitat due to logging and oil palm plantations. In 1996, Lone moved permanently to Borneo to help save the orangutan from extinction.