After receiving their degrees, the two traveled to Peru in order to study birds and other wildlife native to the area and they were married there in 1950.
[5] On 24 December 1971, she and Juliane boarded the flight to travel to Pucallpa, where Hans-Wilhelm was working at the time, to spend Christmas there with him.
Her daughter, Juliane, was the only survivor of the crash, having fallen from 3,000 m (10,000 ft), still strapped into her seat that, apparently, cushioned her landing.
Although injured, without food, and unable to find her mother, the teenager then hiked for eleven days through the rainforest until she found help.
[4] At the time of her death, Koepcke was a department head for a natural history museum affiliated with the National University of San Marcos in Lima and a member of the German Ornithologists' Society.