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Chapter 1: What is the mission of Maya Higa and Alveus Sanctuary?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We hear a lot about what's wrong with the internet, the misinformation, the addiction, the outrage cycles. But today we're sharing something that's really right with it.
Our animals would be able to reach millions and millions of people without having to meet a single one of them in person.
That's content creator and conservationist Maya Higa, who built an animal sanctuary that no one can visit, but everyone can be a part of. She's a licensed falconer, one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, and the founder of Alveus Sanctuary in Austin, Texas, a wildlife rescue powered entirely by people online from all over the world.
In her talk, she shares how she turned social media into a conservation tool and why a model where the animals never meet their fans might actually be the best thing for them.
My mission is to use the internet to build our next generation of conservationists. And I think it's working.
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Chapter 2: How did Maya Higa transition from zookeeper to content creator?
That's coming up right after a short break.
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And now, our TED Talk of the day.
Chapter 3: What unique model does Alveus Sanctuary use for animal conservation?
So my mission is to use the internet to build our next generation of conservationists. And I have not been doing this for all that long. OK, I was born in 1998, so I will get that out of the way right off the bat. But I'll tell you guys how I got started. So I grew up on a farm, and I always loved animals. So we had rabbits and horses and chickens and you name it, we had it, and I loved it.
So then when I was 18 and in college, naturally, I got a job as a zookeeper. So I'd put on the safari outfit, and I would bring animals like kangaroos and lemurs to schools and birthday parties to teach kids about wildlife. It was a pretty cool job. It was really awesome.
Chapter 4: How does livestreaming contribute to conservation education?
So then one night after work, I met some friends online who were livestreaming themselves playing video games on Twitch. and I had no idea what that meant. But I learned that I could broadcast myself live on this website doing whatever I wanted. So I could cook or I could sing or I could play video games. And if people enjoyed watching it, they would send me tips, so cash, like actual real money.
And as a college student, that's pretty freaking sweet. So I started streaming to about 10 viewers at a time almost every day. Then one night after one of these livestreams, I got a call from a zookeeper friend about this red-tailed hawk who had been hit by a car, and he needed help.
So we brought Bean, that's what we called him, home to my college house, and I started to rehabilitate him in my backyard. So then one night, I'm livestreaming, I'm cooking, I'm talking about this new hawk in my backyard, and one of my viewers didn't believe me.
Chapter 5: What animals are featured at Alveus Sanctuary and their stories?
They didn't believe that I had a bird in my backyard, and I could not have that. So I put my falconry glove on, and I brought the bird inside to show them. Of course, because I have a problem. And one of the people watching this stream made a short video of this moment, and they shared it on Reddit. And it went viral.
So my viewership shot up overnight, and I started livestreaming Bean's rehabilitation process. So I'd call him from his perch to my glove, and the people watching my stream started becoming as invested as I was in his recovery. It was like they were doing it with me, sort of, which was the coolest thing that I've ever done.
And then eventually, because I was reaching so many people with Bean Story, the zoo that I worked at started allowing me to bring animals like cockatoos and reptiles home to present on my livestream. So suddenly, somehow, I had turned this zoo outreach job that I had into a work-from-home situation, right?
Chapter 6: How has Maya's online community impacted conservation efforts?
Which is awesome, but instead of reaching 20 kids at a time in a classroom, I was reaching thousands of people at a time, all over the world. So this was when it really clicked for me, right? I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, but I wanted to do it at a much, much larger scale.
So then two years later, at 22 years old, I came up with a plan, and the vision was to build an animal sanctuary that nobody visits, or at least not in person. So we would rescue animals and build huge animal enclosures, and we would livestream conservation education programs online so people could fall in love with our animals the way that they fell in love with Bean, that bird.
Our animals would be able to reach millions and millions of people without having to meet a single one of them in person. And then, of course, I would fundraise all of the capital to do all of these things and build this entire facility in one single livestream, which is the craziest idea that I've ever had. But this is crazier. It worked somehow.
So I'm livestreaming one day, and there's some... Oh, thank you.
Chapter 7: What future plans does Alveus Sanctuary have for wildlife conservation?
Whoa.
Wow.
I'll take the applause. Thank you so much. So I'm livestreaming one day, and someone in my live chat said, Maya, if we raised $500,000, would you shave your head on stream? And I said, yeah, duh. Because who wouldn't do that? Who in their right mind wouldn't do that? Apparently, that was pretty motivating, though, because over the course of a 21-hour-long livestream, we fundraised $573,000.
to build this sanctuary.
Chapter 8: How can audiences support Alveus Sanctuary's mission?
So I bought some land in Austin, Texas, started building animal enclosures, and I started growing my hair back. That takes about two years, in case anyone was curious. So next up was rescuing animals. OK, so Appa and Momo are marmosets. They're these very tiny, very, very charming New World monkeys.
Someone originally bought them as pets online, but then after years of inadequate care, they were brought to us for rehabilitation. So they now live at Alves to help teach people about the exploitation of primates in the pet trade and about the importance of conserving their rainforest habitats too. They also have a little iPad to play games on now. It's very, very cute.
Finn is an American red fox who was confiscated from the illegal pet trade in California. So he and his best friend Reed now live at Alvarez to help teach people about the nightmare that is the fur trade, helping to build a new generation of fur-free consumers. Then there's Winnie the Moo, She's a cow. She was rescued from a beef operation in Oklahoma.
She lives at Alves to help teach people about commercial agriculture and how it impacts animal welfare and our planet. One way that viewers can support the sanctuary is by feeding Winnie treats. So a five-dollar donation made online results in treats being dispensed via this automated feeder. To date, that treat feeder has generated over 38,000 dollars in funding for the sanctuary.
Isn't that crazy? It's a lot of treats, and she's a very happy cow. Since 2019, through livestreaming, I have raised over seven and a half million dollars for conservation causes across the globe. In 2025 alone, we reached over 250 million people with conservation education online.
That's over 10 million classrooms, just like the ones that I was bringing zoo animals to in college just in the last year. Alvarez is now home to rescued parrots and emus and monkeys and wolfdogs and more, and we have those 36 cameras that are livestreaming them 24 hours a day.
But the beautiful thing about these live cameras is our animals are all blissfully unaware of the thousands of eyes on them at any given time. Not being open to the public means that our animals are less stressed by the unpredictable factors that come with people visiting.
It also means that we've never had to divert any of our funding to guest experiences, like gift shops and concession stands and parking lots. But one of the most positive benefits is we've developed one of the most accessible zoo models in the world. Anyone with an internet connection can visit our animals for free from their device from anywhere on the planet. And they do.
Our online demographic, our online community, they range from about 17 to 28 years old. We are our nation's new voters, new consumers and up-and-coming decision-makers. We hold the future of this planet in our hands. But most of our online community didn't even join with an interest in environmentalism at all.
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