Socialite Is Now Greece’s ‘Turtle Lady’

But for a bothersome toothache, international socialite Lily Venizelos might never have become Greece’s “turtle lady.”

Browsing through a magazine in a dentist’s waiting room six years ago, she read with alarm about a breed of sea turtle facing extinction on one of her favorite Greek islands.

The next day, Venizelos was on a plane to the Ionian island of Zakynthos to begin a tireless campaign that has since won her acclaim as an outspoken conservationist.

“The turtle is so mysterious, there’s so little we know about it. I feel it’s a wronged animal because it’s not cute like the seal or the panda,” Venizelos said in an interview at her opulent Athens home.

Laganas Bay on Zakynthos is where one of the world’s oldest species--the Loggerhead sea turtle--congregates from around the Mediterranean to nest each summer.

Turtles outlived the Dinosaur Age but, 150 million years later, they may yet succumb to the tourist.

If the unregulated construction, noise and easy profit that have afflicted most Greek islands hits the 1.5-mile Laganas Beach, Venizelos believes, the remaining few thousand may not survive.

“I discovered Zakynthos by accident in 1974 when bad weather forced our yacht to anchor in Laganas Bay. . . . It was a paradise with trees, birds and no hotels,” she recalled.

“I noticed the deterioration of the beach year after year and felt something was wrong but didn’t realize what until I saw the magazine article at the dentist’s in 1983.”

Since then, Venizelos has founded the Mediterranean Assn. to Save the Sea Turtles and has drastically cut back on her socializing in European capitals to put in 14-hour days on her conservation work.

An art historian by training, she had been an avid diver and shell collector on the island of Hydra, south of Athens, where she was born.

She married the grandson of one of Greece’s legendary politicians, Eleftherios Venizelos, who served as prime minister in the 1920s and 1930s.

The petite woman, 53, who wears turtle-shaped designer jewelry, campaigns all over Europe, lobbying international organizations.

But, surprisingly, she has never set eyes on the creatures she devotes so much time to and even spurns the idea of joining scientists who come to Zakynthos each summer to research the mysterious habits of the turtle.

“I refuse to impose my presence on their beach even in the least disturbing way,” she said.

The turtles are timid, sensitive creatures and need darkness and quiet to carry a weight of up to 275 pounds out of the water.

They crawl 10 to 25 yards, dig a hole in the sand, lay their eggs and bury them with their back flippers.

Their offspring hatch after incubating in the heat of the sun for six to eight weeks.

In the last 15 years, the number of female turtles coming to Laganas has dropped to 800 from 1,500--and about half of them are injured from speedboats, Venizelos said.

Beach umbrellas disturb or destroy nests, and hatchlings often cannot emerge because people walking on the beach pack down the sand. Lights and vehicle tire marks distract the turtles from reaching the water, with many dying from exposure to the sun.

Sometimes, breeding turtles give up fighting the obstacles and just dump their eggs in the water, where they cannot hatch.

Foreign trade in the turtles is banned under the U.N.’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, but Venizelos said they are nevertheless captured in Malta, Italy, Tunisia and the Balearic Islands.

They are further threatened by pollution, often choking on plastic bags they mistake for jellyfish.

Under pressure from environmental groups and the European Community, the Greek government has limited development in southern Zakynthos. But Venizelos said the rules are not enforced.

Local landowners objecting to the restrictions have even declared Venizelos an “undesired person” on the island.

Venizelos is firmly behind government proposals to build a $1.5-million sea park that would attract the tourists sought by the locals while ensuring the animals’ survival.

But the fight is proving harder than she thought.

“In the beginning, my main objective was to save the nesting area, but then the human factor came in and a different kind of struggle began.”