Many mosquitos. Rain. Thunder. Ann Christin and Alexander are squashed inside their car. It is the middle of the night. Alexander is filming vlog-style. Their tent is underwater and everything they own is tightly packed inside their car or wet above their heads in their roof tent. These two have sold everything they own, have quit their jobs and are smack in the middle of a scientific expedition. They are traveling from Canada down to Patagonia to visit, film and study the wetlands of the Americas. 

Ann Christin Kornelsen · Mission to Marsh · Linkedin · @mission.to.marsh

How did Anni end up here?

Ann Christin has been studying wetlands since university, she knew that the science was screaming for us humans to take the wetlands more seriously. To stop depleting them, to protect what was left and restore what was lost. She believed deeply that the wetlands needed a better story, one that would turn things around. Data wasn’t enough. And she was getting frustrated.

„What do most people think of when they hear of the wetlands?“ Ann Christin asks me. I think of silence, insects, wetness. The Mexican mangroves I’ve visited. “I wish!” she says, “Most people have far scarier thoughts”. She goes on explaining that wetlands have always been connected to ghosts, darkness & deaths. Thrillers take place there, it’s the unknown, it’s muddy and wet. The lord-of-the-rings-crew Frodo, Sam and Gollum pass through the Dead Marshes in Tolkien’s book The Two Towers. That scene is set in a swampy wetland with eerie lights and faces under the water. “This is the story I am changing.” Ann Christin states.

She met Alexander (now co-founder, husband and father of two) on Tinder. He was working in a marketing environment he was frustrated with. Selling stuff seemed senseless. Was he the one with the tools to turn Ann Christin’s story and scientific vision into a movement? Ann Christin told him that the wetlands worldwide were the best carbon storage sinks. That they worked as water reservoirs, storing water like a sponge to protect us not only from floods and high water, but also from droughts. That they were unique habitats for endangered species. That wetlands were natural water filters, keeping our groundwaters clean. Alexander decided that he wanted to go visit them with her.

The plan? Create a documentary, collect water samples and identify the status quo of wetlands (swamps, bogs and mangroves) consult with experts, grassroots activists, environmentalists, corporations, and politicians. “We wanted to show how valuable wetland habitats are and what everybody can do to protect them.” To test if this was a cause others would join, they pitched their plan to the patagonia foundation. It worked. They secured funding from patagonia and the Andrea von Braun Foundation.

The Mission to Marsh documentary proves the wetlands' case better than any scientific paper could. No Gollum in sight. Mosquitos? Yes. You actually start feeling the itch watching Alexander get stung again, but what is a mosquito bite compared to the carbon storage capacity four times that of forests?

The aerial footage is breathtaking, the expert interviews are grounding. Watching the movie I instantly trust what Ann Christin and Alexander are sharing because they are experiencing their journey with me. This is not scripted, this is as real as it gets. And watch out for the 🐊s.

“While Elon Musk prepares interstellar voyages to find water on the red planet, we are convinced that humanity must look for solutions on Earth.” That is why Mission to Marsh is helping corporations step into their responsibility. “We’re the Robin Hoods of the wetlands” Ann Christin explains. “We give corporations the possibility to incorporate sustainability into their business. We then use that money to regenerate the wetlands.” Humans who are team-earth can become wetland sponsors, this way we can all combat climate change together.

Another thing we can do to support the wetlands is become aware that most commercial soil is made from extracted peat. Peatlands are a specific type of wetland, and every bag of peat-based soil represents habitat that has been destroyed to produce it. The label won’t say if soil contains peat, but you can explicitly look for soil that is peat-free. “It’s comparable to ordering vegan milk in 2018” Ann Christin says. She goes on to tell me that, even as a vegetarian, she always asked for the vegan option. This way, she says, stores and coffee shops would get used to milk alternatives quicker and realise that this is what customers want. “We are always told that our decisions as consumers don’t really matter. This isn’t true.” She now asks for peat-free earth whenever she enters a hardware store. Go ask next time too. It makes a difference.

One morning Ann Christin’s husband was reading a newspaper article during breakfast on marathons, when his intuition handed him the word MOORATHON. Together they turn this word into an inclusive charity run that turns movement into moorland protection: across 42 days you can log activities like jogging, cycling, hiking, skating, or wheelchair travel into an app and your kilometers are converted into renaturation support. The MOORATHON protected 51.020 m² of wetlands in 2025 alone. We can join this year in August. Save the date: 03.08.2026.

I can’t quite remember how I came across Ann Christin. I remember it was a LinkedIn post that pulled me in. She had just visited Change Now with her company (in her case family), her newborn wrapped around Alex’s chest. Everything she does is refreshingly real and unperformed. She is doing the work that she sees necessary to provide for the future she wants her kids to live in. I have been teaching my kids sustainability, while she has been teaching us adults. 

She started out on a hunch. Four years later her vision is out there changing things. No one was noticing the wetlands disappearing. Ann Christin did. Quitting her job, applying for funding, rewriting the wetland’s story and raising awareness made a massive difference. Without her this would not have happened. The fog Ann Christin lifted: wetlands aren't a menace. We were just taught to fear them.

How did Ann Christin do this? She didn't add more data; she had enough to fill a library, and it changed nothing. She went looking for the story the wetlands were already standing in, and found it: ghosts, dead marshes, Gollum and the faces under the water. Centuries of swamp-as-horror no paper was ever going to outrun. She named it. And once it had a name, it could be changed. The marshes are gaining Moormentum.

But naming was only half of it. A name fades if there's nothing to hold it. So Ann Christin built the structure that would carry the story after the documentary ended.

How did Ann Christin do this? She and Alexander didn't stop at telling their story, they built the container that lets it run without them. A non-profit. The MOORATHON, where anyone, anywhere logs their kilometres and 51,020 m² of wetland gets protected. Corporate funding that makes restoration part of company culture. They built a system other people step into.

What's the thing you can feel deeply but haven't named? Can your imagination conjour up a container that could hold it? You don't have to do this alone you know. Ask a friend!

Stay curious. Stay courageous.

This is the first in a series of interviews with people changing things nobody asked them to change. Subscribe to see who comes next.

^{Written by a human. Unpolished. On purpose.}