Kerry Kilshaw is a postdoctoral researcher at WildCRU and has focused her research on the wildcat in Scotland for the past 15 years. She sits on the In Situ Management Group for the Saving Wildcats Project and was a member of the Scottish Wildcat Conservation Action Plan steering group between 2012-2019. She is also a member of the Eurowildcat Group and plays an active role in the new government led national Scotland’s Wildcat Strategy

Kerry spent her early years in Saudi Arabia with time spent in the deserts giving her a love of the outdoors, before returning to the UK.  She obtained a BSc in Biological Sciences (Birmingham) in 1998 and following a 3-month expedition to Oman with Raleigh International in 1999 decided to move away from lab based research and pursue a career in conservation. She obtained a MSc (Leeds) in Biological Conservation in 2002 and following various periods of fieldwork in Africa, Belize and the UK and short-term contracts in Scotland on issues relating to conservation of the wildcat she then gained her doctorate in Zoology (DPhil, Oxford) in 2015.

Primarily a meso-carnivore researcher, since 2009, Kerry has focused her research on the wildcat, trialling the most recent technology such as camera traps and GPS tracking and has collaborated with several government organisations and NGO’s during her research.  She has co-supervised 6 MSc projects and often provides training and advice to staff from other organisations in camera trapping, GPS tracking and field survey skills aimed towards wildcat survey work.

She collaborates closely with other organisations currently working to help conserve the wildcat and regularly advises on matters of ecology and conducting research that helps inform policy for wildcat conservation in Scotland. She aims to positively contribute to conservation actions of the wildcat by sharing data and knowledge about the species collated by WildCRU’s Wildcat Project over the past 3 decades.