Conservation Campaign
She visited southwestern Turkey for the first time in July 1975, when the region was still outside the usual tracks of international tourism, by means of a boat (Bouboulina) purchased in Greece.
Between 1975 and 1981 she occasionally stopped at İztuzu Beach and Dalyan on her boat trips and was therefore called "Kaptan June" (Captain June) by the locals.In 1984 she settled in Dalyan in her own baraka (beach hut) on İztuzu Beach.
When it became clear that there were plans to exploit the beach for mass tourism, she started a campaign to preserve İztuzu Beach as a breeding habitat for the loggerhead turtle, which is on the IUCN Red List.
In April 1987 building started on a 1800-bed hotel complex by the name of Kaunos Beach Hotel. This caused a storm of protests world-wide. There were protests from the IUCN, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoologische Gesellschaft Frankfurt. Particularly in the former Federal Republic of Germany the building caused a major uproar, because the German DEG (Deutsche Finanzierungsgesellschaft für Beteiligungen in Entwicklungsländern) wanted to use an amount equivalent to 5 million euros from public means under the pretense of development aid.
June Haimoff approached the WWF and consequently Prince Philip—then President—asked the Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Özal for a moratorium, while awaiting the outcome of an Environmental Impact Assessment. In the meantime the German Federal Government had forbidden DEG to invest development aid money for the building of the Kaunos Beach Hotel.
The project was stopped in September 1987 and in 1988 the Turkish government decided to forbid future building at the beach. The Köyceğiz-Dalyan region then obtained the status of Special Environmental Protection Area (SEPA).
Since then, June Haimoff has dedicated her efforts to assure conservation of the site as well as for attracting international attention to the fate of the turtles ".
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 the Köyceğiz-Dalyan Special Environmental Protection Area. She is particularly concerned for the protection of the soft-shelled Nile Turtle and the Oriental Sweetgum trees (Liquidambar orientalis), another endemic species proper to the region.
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