Kerry-Jayne Wilson

In 2021, Wilson published New Zealand Seabirds, a summary of her 50 years of research. She died on 29 March 2022.

In the 2019 New Year Honours, Wilson was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to seabird conservation.

In 2012, Wilson was awarded the OSNZ's Robert Falla Memorial Award for her "work... in the field of ornithology and her contributions to the work of the society over many years".

Wilson started teaching at Lincoln University in the entomology department as a lecturer in 1986 under her male birth name. After teaching ecology for 23 years, Wilson retired to Charleston on the West Coast of the South Island in 2009. She continued to be involved in conservation projects, and was a founding trustee of the West Coast Penguin Trust in 2006. Her work with the Trust led to the construction in 2014 of a three-kilometre (1.9 mi) fence along State Highway 6, which prevented blue penguins from being killed on the road. She was involved with the conservation of the Westland petrel (Procellaria westlandica) colony near Punakaiki, including strategies to protect petrel fledglings from being disoriented and confused by street lights.

As an undergraduate, Wilson spent the summer of 1969–1970 in the Snares Islands, working as an assistant to the Australian ornithologist and photographer John Warham. She was struck by the huge numbers of sooty shearwaters (Puffinus griseus), penguins, petrels, and prions, and seabirds later became her research focus. She earned a Master of Science degree at the University of Canterbury, and was appointed a faculty member at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) in 1986.

Kerry-Jayne Wilson MNZM (6 March 1949 – 29 March 2022) was a New Zealand biologist and lecturer in ecology at Lincoln University in the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences.