Women of the UAE: Amna Al Otaiba

As manager of her department at Al Ain Zoo, Ms Al Otaiba was responsible for establishing standards to protect zoo employees, land and animals.

Amna Al Otaiba places the Sheikh Zayed Desert Learning Centre at the heart of Al Ain Zoo’s latest developments. Ravindranath K / The National

AL AIN // When Amna Al Otaiba began working at Al Ain Zoo, she was the first and only employee in what was then the newly-established office of environment, health and safety.

“I remember when I first came here, everybody was like, ‘what is she doing here?’” Ms Al Otaiba said. “When I started this field everybody was like, ‘OK, let her sit in the chair. OK, local lady, let her sit in the chair. I hated sitting in my office. Always, I was making tours, inspections.”

As manager of her department, Ms Al Otaiba was responsible for establishing and enforcing standards to protect the zoo’s employees, land and animals, and she didn’t waste time getting to work when she took on the job six years ago.

It wasn’t uncommon for her to be the only woman standing in a black abaya among hundreds of labourers under the scorching sun, inspecting their living and working conditions as phase one of the Al Ain Wildlife Park & Resort development got under way.

“It was tough,” said Ms Al Otaiba, who is the daughter of the country’s first oil minister. “And you have to be tough. I like to be at the top of my job. I like to be at the top of my inspections. Day after day, they start realising, ‘OK, we’d better work with this lady. We’d better accept her here’.”

As construction progressed on the development of Al Ain Wildlife Park & Resort, Ms Al Otaiba was determined to protect as much of the natural environment as she could. She had the property mapped using satellite imaging to pinpoint all the indigenous trees and plants that stood in areas earmarked for construction.

She put numbers on the native plants and issued a stern warning to the contractors: “You will not touch it”.

“I didn’t want to stop them, but I said, wait, don’t disturb our environment. Our environment already is a fragile, sensitive environment.

“If we lose a tree, we are not like Europe. Europe has many trees – if they lose a tree, they have another one. Here, if we lose a tree, we need ages of time to grow another one, especially if you have a tree about 40 years old.”

Anyone who is taken on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Al Ain Zoo can see Ms Al Otaiba’s trees, most of them native ghaf, standing isolated and surrounded by a protective bern as construction continues.

“If you see the site, some trees are standing alone there. Some people think it’s part of our landscaping, but it was not part of landscaping, it was part of our fighting,” Ms Al Otaiba said with a laugh. “I said ‘Yes, you will leave it and you will water it’.”

But perhaps the greatest source of Ms Al Otaiba’s pride is the Sheikh Zayed Desert Learning Centre, which she calls the “heart” of the zoo’s phase one development project.

“It’s a learning centre plus a museum,” said Ms Al Otaiba. “It presents the natural history of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, plus what Sheikh Zayed did to protect the environment.

“Sheikh Zayed, from back, back, many years back, protected the animals, and the zoo is the example. He protected the trees and, as you can see, that the trees that I was fighting for – the 40-year-old trees – they’re there.”

Ms Al Otaiba’s department now includes eight employees, and she hopes to “put UAE ladies with us in the field”.

And this autumn, Ms Al Otaiba plans on pursuing her PhD in environmental science.

“In UAE, women like challenges,” said Ms Al Otaiba.