Carisa Lee

Hukaymah Ali was al­ways fas­ci­nat­ed by an­i­mals.

“I was in­flu­enced by Steve Ir­win great­ly,” she said.

She start­ed work­ing with the founder of the El So­cor­ro Cen­tre for Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion, Ri­car­do Meade, then she found­ed West In­di­an Her­p­ing with oth­er an­i­mal ed­u­ca­tors and pro­tec­tors.

“We were all in­ter­est­ed in snakes, in par­tic­u­lar, snakes and frogs like rep­tiles and am­phib­ians and we start­ed this group with­in the cen­tre and we would go out in the for­est and look for snakes and learn about them,” she said.

Ali can be found on Tik­Tok as the An­i­mal Girl, doc­u­ment­ing her ad­ven­tures with wildlife. She said men are of­ten sur­prised to see her lead­ing tours or giv­ing demostra­tions on the han­dling of wildlife.

“They are pret­ty sur­prised when they see me do­ing that. They try to be dom­i­nant and you know they are the sav­iour they try to con­trol the sit­u­a­tion be­cause you know women sup­posed to be scared of every­thing,” she said.

Ali said her re­sponse is to, “just show them, I don’t say any­thing I just do what I do.”

And she does even in the com­ments un­der her posts which are viewed hun­dreds of thou­sands of times. When men try to min­i­malise her work.

Ali ad­mits men and women are not on a lev­el play­ing field, high­light­ing the month­ly men­stru­al cy­cle which for some women can be crip­pling. Her team em­braces it.

“They un­der­stand if I am go­ing through some­thing they will just leave me and let me be,” she said.

She be­lieves that women need to ex­plain their sit­u­a­tion to men so they get a clear­er pic­ture.

“Men re­al­ly don’t un­der­stand what we go through,” she said.

Ali, a Mus­lim, said her work as a wildlife con­ser­va­tion­ist goes hand in hand with her re­li­gion.

“They are 100 per cent sup­port­ive, even my par­ents. It ac­tu­al­ly brings you clos­er to the re­li­gion, it brings you peace and opens your eyes to the lit­tle things,” she said.

Her ad­vice young girls who are in­ter­est­ed in wildlife preser­va­tion is that they pur­sue their pas­sion and find their crowd.

“When peo­ple try to make a life for you, don’t take them on,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ali, if an­i­mals like hawks who help their mates take care of the ba­by, or male frogs who help pre­pare a space along with their fe­male mate can em­brace eq­ui­ty, all of mankind can do the same.