June Haimoff

June Haimoff is an English environmentalist based in Dalyan in southwestern Turkey (Muğla Province) since her retirement and who has launched a successful campaign for the conservation of the loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta), which lay their eggs in the İztuzu Beach in Dalyan.

June Haimoff was born in Essex. She pursued the ambition of becoming an opera singer and did her studies in music, dancing and ballet, and later on she was seriously engaged in painting. Because of her father's profession, a prominent petroleum engineer, she had in the meantime toured all over the Middle East.

She visited southwestern Turkey for the first time in July 1975, which the region was still outside the usual tracks of international tourism, and by means of a boat (Bouboulina) purchased in Greece. Affectionately called "Kaptan June" (Captain June) by the locals as she became known in Dalyan, she settled there on a permanent basis as of 1984, living with a dozen dogs and cats in a solitary barrack on the beach.

Once in Dalyan, she realized that the sea turtles unique to the locality were lethally menaced by the buildings which started to rise near the beach in pace with the development of tourism, June Haimoff found herself in a battle to save a Caretta caretta breeding site from exploitation for mass tourism. Since then, she dedicated her efforts to assure conservation of the site as well as for attracting international attention to the fate of the turtles ".^[1].

She herself related the struggle and the victory for the preservation of the turtle species in her book titled "Kaptan June and the Turtles" published for the first time in 1997. A second edition published in 2002 and titled, this time, "Kaptan June and the Dalyan Turtles", features a new prologue, two additional chapters, bringing the story up to date, and an index.

June Haimoff currently pursues her efforts in a wider frame, and is also concerned with the preservation of the nature in a more general sense with focus on the unique flora and fauna of Lake Köyceğiz-Dalyan and the vicinity. She is particularly concerned for the protection of Oriental Sweetgum trees (Liquidambar orientalis), another endemic species proper to the region.

See also

• Dalyan
• Loggerhead sea turtle
• Oriental Sweetgum

Footnotes

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