Palmer Newbould – Ecologist with proud record in education and public service

Our former colleague and friend, Palmer Newbould, who has died aged 87, was a leading figure in the teaching of nature conservation and its development as an important element of government policy.

His main research interest was the measurement of primary productivity in ecosystems, and this work underpinned his formidable knowledge of conservation and the pioneering contributions he made to new university courses in conservation and ecology.

The son of a former Liberal MP, he was educated at Charterhouse and Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied botany. In 1955, he became a lecturer in plant ecology at University College, London (UCL), where his early research work was supervised by WH Pearsall, professor of botany. His first paper, on acidity and specific conductivity in plant communities of valley bogs in the New Forest, was published with Eville Gorham, and was followed by his influential 1960 paper on the ecology of Cranesmoor, a New Forest valley bog.

At UCL, he was also instrumental in establishing Europe’s first postgraduate diploma and MSc course in conservation. The course, for which he was the first convener, has long been recognised as one of the leading qualifications for those aspiring to work in this field, and nature conservation worldwide has benefited enormously from its students. He moved from UCL to become a founding professor of biology at the New University of Ulster (NUU) at Coleraine in the late 1960s where, along with his colleague Amyan Macfadyen, he introduced two of the earliest undergraduate teaching programmes in ecology and environmental science.

His contributions to nature conservation in Northern Ireland were outstanding and began on arrival in Coleraine. Involved as he was in the International Biological Programme and as vice-president of the British Ecological Society in 1968 and 1969, his rich ecological experience proved invaluable. Nowhere was this more evident than in his work with two statutory advisory bodies, the Nature Reserves Committee and the Ulster Countryside Committee, on which he served more or less throughout the 1970s. These were seminal times in the development of conservation in Northern Ireland as the first wide-ranging conservation legislation had only been enacted in 1965. Nor were his public service and educational involvement confined to Northern Ireland. He served for more than 10 years on the Nuclear Energy Board in Dublin in the 1970s and 1980s and as a judge on the Aer Lingus Young Scientist of the Year competition in the 1970s.

A practising believer in travelling by rail rather than private car whenever possible he was a regular user of the Enterprise train service between Dublin and Belfast and a devotee of the Enterprise’s cooked breakfasts.

In the higher education field, he formed strong friendships with academic colleagues throughout Ireland and was closely involved, for example, in helping establish the environmental science undergraduate course at Sligo Regional Technical College where he served for several years as external examiner. At NUU, as chairman of the University Grounds Committee, Palmer was instrumental in the design, management and transformation of the new campus estate from an exposed, windy, agricultural site into a mature wooded landscape. One of its centrepieces, the Guy Wilson daffodil garden, was quickly designated a national daffodil collection.

In various university committee roles, he was a respected, if reluctant, administrator throughout the difficult 1970s in Northern Ireland. He became acting vice-chancellor in the early 1980s, overseeing complex negotiations during the merger of NUU and the Ulster Polytechnic which, after merger, became the University of Ulster (UU). His contribution to these negotiations was indispensable and it was largely because of the trust placed in his judgement by colleagues at the time that they eventually had a successful outcome.

When UU was established he became the first provost of the Coleraine campus, a position he held until his retirement from academic life in the mid-1980s. Palmer’s early years of retirement were spent in Northern Ireland and he was characteristically active in a variety of ecological fields. He was soon elected chairman of the Ulster Wildlife Trust, a body he had helped to set up about 10 years earlier, and in 1989 he was appointed chairman of the statutory Northern Ireland Council for Nature Conservation and the Countryside (CNCC), a role to which he was uniquely well-fitted given his skill as a chairman, breadth of contacts, familiarity with the subject matter and dedication to hard work. Public recognition for his work in nature conservation and with the CNCC in particular came in 1993 when he was awarded an OBE.

As chairman of CNCC he became one of Northern Ireland’s representatives on the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the statutory body advising the UK government and devolved administrations on their responsibilities under national and international legislation. After serving two terms in his CNCC role, his wide interests and encyclopaedic knowledge led him to another statutory position, this time as a trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which distributes a share of the money raised by the National Lottery. Throughout this period his passion for nature conservation remained undiminished and with Jo, his wife, he worked on a project originally established by Max Nicholson in Mallorca, to monitor biodiversity and environmental change in the Albufera wetland under the auspices of Earthwatch Europe. He eventually moved to Cirencester with Jo where he spent the last 15 years or so of his life. In Cirencester his organisational skills and contacts with a wide range of scientific expertise in biology and ecology were put to good use in his work for the Cirencester Science and Technology Society. He was a generous and warm-hearted man, always encouraging to colleagues and students. He was widely regarded with great affection. He never pulled rank and had a wide range of interests beyond academe – theatre, music and poetry in particular. And he had an enormous capacity for enjoyment and for sharing it with others.

His annual garden parties for staff and students which he co-organised with Amyan Macfadyen in graduation week – the “Macfadybould” parties – quickly becoming an established event of the NUU social calendar. His friends were from all walks of life and reflected the breadth of his interests in the arts and sciences. Former university colleagues, students and fellow conservationists in government and the voluntary sector remember him as a cultured, imaginative and good-humoured man with immense intellectual energy. He is survived by his wife Jo and their three children: Elizabeth, Andrew and Susan. Palmer John Newbould, Born April 23rd, 1929. Died August 29th, 2016.