About Simon Poulton

From his earliest years, Simon Poulton has had a fascination for mammals and birds. His undergraduate thesis compared the ecology of wading birds on the east and west coasts of Britain. As a young zoology graduate, he used his skills and knowledge to undertake field research in South America and explore opportunities in India, Nepal and the Far East. He is actively involved in mammal research and conservation and has been a member of council of The Mammal Society and was chair of their Surveys Committee for five years. Recently he set up and was inaugural chair of the Shropshire Mammal Group. He has also been a long-standing member of Fauna & Flora International, RSPB, the Bombay Natural History Society and the British Ecological Society.

During fourteen years in ADAS (the Agricultural Development & Advisory Service of MAFF) he was contract manager for the National Survey of Small Mammals in Hedgerows and co-ordinator of biological monitoring of Environmentally Sensitive Areas. He also led a number of ecological surveys and experiments, including botanical monitoring of Set-Aside and sheep grazing of heather moorland.

During this time he was the primary ecological data analyst for ADAS. He developed a number of field methodologies (see e.g. Critchley & Poulton, 1998) and sampling strategies and is particularly experienced in dealing with large “noisy” ecological datasets. His data analysis skills include a wide range of statistical techniques, including ANOVA, regression and multivariate procedures. He has also exploited computer-intensive tools, such as Monte Carlo routines and genetic algorithms to uncover hidden relationships in multi-dimensional data.

Since leaving ADAS in 1997 he was a self-employed consultant before establishing BioEcoSS Ltd. in 2003. During this time he created a large number of custom-designed Microsoft Access databases for a wide range of clients, including government agencies, conservation organisations and universities. More recently, he has developed applications in MS SQL Server and ASP.NET and is currently developing on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.