About us

George is an experienced ecologist with over 12 years’ experience working in the ecology sector – she joined FPCR’s York office in 2020 after working in consultancy for several years in Manchester. She has extensive experience managing the ecology inputs for a mix of residential, leisure, and commercial/mixed-use projects from pre-planning through to ecological supervision during construction. She has also coordinated inputs for major infrastructure projects, including management of bat survey teams, and the coordination and QA of Phase I habitat surveys. She is an experienced field surveyor and holds a licence to survey for great crested newts in England and Wales. Her written experience comprises ecological appraisals, protected species reports, management plans and mitigation strategies, as well as ecology chapters for EIAs and shadow Habitat Regulations Assessments.

As well as her consultancy experience, she worked for four years as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of York investigating differences in butterfly and moth responses to climate change, and completed a Ph.D. at Durham University on the population spread of British deer.

Publications:

• What biodiversity net gain policy means for property (2019) placenorthwest.co.uk/news/comment-what-biodiversity-net-gain-policy-means-for-property/
• Platts, Mason, Palmer et al. (2019) Habitat availability explains variation in climate-driven range shifts across multiple taxonomic groups. Scientific Reports 9 (15039). nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51582-2
• Palmer et al. (2017) Climate change, climatic variation and extreme biological responses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 372 (1723) 20160144. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0144
• Palmer & Hill (2016) Using Historical Data for Studying Range Changes. Global Climate Change and Terrestrial Invertebrates, edited by Scott Johnson & Hefin Jones. Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119070894.ch2
• Lucey, Palmer et al. (2016) Reframing the evidence base for policy-relevance to increase impact: a case study on forest fragmentation in the oil palm sector. Journal of Applied Ecology. 54(3) 731 – 736. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12845
• Palmer et al. (2015) Nationwide trophic cascades: changes in avian community structure driven by ungulates. Scientific Reports 5 (15601). https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15601
• Mason, Palmer et al. (2015) Geographical range margins of many taxonomic groups continue to shift polewards. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 115 (3) 586 – 597. https://doi.org/10.1111/bij.12574
• Thomas CD & Palmer (2015) Reply to Hulme et al: Cover of non-native species is too low to adversely affect native plant diversity at a national scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (23) E2990. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1507966112
• Thomas CD & Palmer (2015) Non-native plants add to the British flora without negative consequences for native diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(14) 4387 – 4392. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1423995112