Name Kazimierz Wodzicki | ||
Died 1987, Wellington, New Zealand | ||
Count Kazimierz Antoni Wodzicki (4 February 1900 – 15 June 1987) was a Polish and New Zealand mammalogist and ornithologist.
Born to a noble family, and educated, in Poland, he became Professor of Anatomy and Histology at the University College of Agriculture in Warsaw. He and his family fled to England following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, and he went to New Zealand in 1941 as Consul-General for the London-based Polish government-in-exile.
In New Zealand Wodzicki continued his ornithological interests by joining the Ornithological Society of New Zealand and contributing frequently to its journal. At the end of the war he stayed in New Zealand and worked for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) conducting research on the impact of introduced mammals. The results of his investigations were published in 1950 as Introduced Mammals of New Zealand: an Ecological and Economic Survey (DSIR Bulletin 98), and led to the establishment of the Animal Ecology Section of DSIR, with Wodzicki as its first Director.
Wodzicki’s other research activities included studies on Australasian gannets at Cape Kidnappers, rooks and the birdlife of the Waikanae estuary, as well as investigating problems with introduced rodents on Tokelau and Niue.
In 1962 Wodzicki was elected a member of the Royal Society of New Zealand. In 1976 he was awarded the OBE.