Initially that was through Department of Conservation (DoC), then, since 2002, through both her consultancy and volunteer work.
Less well known is the fact she’s an introduced species herself, having been born in a small town in Kansas in the United States.
Her family then migrated to Michigan before moving to Adelaide, Australia, where she was educated.
She thinks her interest in nature springs from regular family camping holidays.
After gaining applied science in natural resources qualifications in Adelaide and Canberra, she announced to friends while camping she was heading to New Zealand.
She recalls early on, in 1988, she was tenting on a Bay of Plenty property as Cyclone Bola blew over.
After picking kiwifruit and grapes, she got a job at Chateau Tongariro Hotel, where she met her husband-to-be Warren Ross, who taught her to ski.
Then, taking advantage of her US passport, she was recruited to work at the Heavenly ski resort in Lake Tahoe, becoming supervisor of the mountain host programme.
Palmer — joined later by Ross — spent four years in the US, working also for the forest service, before heading back to NZ in 1992.
"We did a big road trip and decided, yep, Queenstown would work."
Not able to get a DoC job, she did frontline sales for a rafting company and worked at the former Shotover Garden Centre.
She then made a "last chance" phone call to DoC, just before Christmas.
"We were of a mind, if I didn’t get anything, we were going to leave — and that was the phone call that hooked a job."
Palmer subsequently spent seven years as DoC’s local programme manager for biodiversity.
She left to start a family — she has two children — then set up her consultancy, Natural Solutions for Nature Ltd.
"I asked around town, ‘If I went out on my own, would you use me?’ and sure enough people did.
"I think 16 hours was my quietest month."
She got busier, however, and even employed two people, "but then I pared that back to just me".
Her business provides ecological assessment for a wide range of people, including subdivision developers, and prepares management plans for reserves.
A lot of the time is educating people about nature.
"Being able to communicate about and improve people’s nature literacy is really fundamental to being able to help decision makers make good decisions, but also just lifting people’s awareness of the world around them."
A lot of her work centres on native birds, and last year she was elected Otago rep on the Birds NZ council.
She had a long stint trying to reinstate a buff weka population on Motatapu Station, but the predators won the day.
Nevertheless, Palmer says "the learning that came from that was a success, and it’s pointed people in the direction of what it takes to achieve reintroductions".
"And the takahe project has learned from that."
She’s also long been involved in monitoring the crested grebe population on Lake Hayes, and further afield, and the endangered birds in the Tucker Beach wildlife reserve.
She recently resigned from the Whakatipu Wildlife Trust but is now on the Tucker Beach Wildlife Trust.
For the past three years Palmer’s been project director/ecologist for the Tucker Beach Jobs for Nature project — "they had a million dollars, just for that project".
She calls this wildlife reserve "just an amazing boutique-sized braided river ecosystem right in the middle of the Basin".
Going back, she’s also proud of her role as an early Queenstown Trails Trust trustee, supporting Kaye Parker and the late Sir Eion Edgar and Terry Stevens.
In her time here, she’s observed "the shift from conservation being a dirty word to being very much part of the fibre of town".
"There’s been an enormous cultural shift — people are now expected to do something in a sustainable realm with their business."
From having done stints with the La Leche League, helping mums with breastfeeding, on the toy library and cycling club committees and Queenstown Primary’s PTA, she’s also observed "the enormity of the generosity of this town".
Palmer says "bird watching and monitoring is my passion, and weaving that through so many other activities, both professional and personal, is an absolute daily pleasure".
