Wildlife conservationist Maya Higa did something extraordinary – and surprising. In only 21 hours, Maya reached over a million people and raised more than half a million dollars to fund a wildlife sanctuary – by livestreaming on Twitch. Following her talk at TED2026, Maya sat down for a special interview with Sherrell to discuss how the internet is creating a novel, non-invasive way for people to learn about – wildlife rehabilitation, discusses the benefits of reaching a new audience through digital platforms, and shares advice she has for young people on finding what you love online.
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[00:00:03] That's Winnie the Moo. She's a red Angus beef cow living her absolute best life at Alvaez Sanctuary in Austin, Texas. And right now, somewhere on the internet, thousands of people are watching her do exactly nothing. And Winnie is loving every second of it. Here's the thing. Winnie isn't just a very charismatic cow.
[00:00:28] She's proof that conservation education doesn't have to look the way we always thought it did. And we get to watch her live her best life, thanks to Maya Higa, the founder of Alvaez Sanctuary. Maya livestreams everything happening at Alvaez, and she's doing a lot more than sharing cute animal videos. Even though, yes, Winnie is very cute.
[00:00:51] On her social feeds, Maya's also giving us answers to wildlife questions I never thought to ask. How do you think scorpions make? These are Madagascar hissing cockers. Oh my god, I feel cool. So they're really grippy, yeah, they can climb. That's a decoy water, and it's just their pee-boy. Why you don't want foxes as a pet? They pee on everything. This is Jalapeno. He's a donkey. And this is Serrano. He's also a donkey. They have a button on their head to make their ears go backwards. This is TED Tech, a podcast from TED.
[00:01:22] I'm your host, Sherelle Dorsey. Maya Higa is a licensed falconer, zookeeper, wildlife rehabilitator, and Twitch streamer. She is also, in her own words, a certified yapper. And she's our guest on the show today. I spoke to Maya at TED2026 in Vancouver. This was shortly after Maya's main stage TED Talk about how she uses live streaming to spread conservation education.
[00:01:49] And then turn those viewers into donors. You can check out her talk on TED.com. And I think you'll be just as captivated with her story as I was. When I learned about Maya's work, I knew I had to interview her for the podcast. When Maya was a college student, she brought a red-tailed hawk on her Twitch stream. It went viral on Reddit.
[00:02:13] The viral hits kept coming, and eventually, Maya went from streaming in her college apartment to building an animal sanctuary. It's also a virtual education center. And get this, a digital zoo. This zoo never closes, and millions of people have visited, even if they've never actually stepped foot in it. Thanks to streaming and cameras that run 24-7, they don't need to.
[00:02:40] This tech has helped Maya reach one of the hardest demographics for conservationists to crack, young men. It turns out they were all on Twitch playing video games. In 2021, Maya used her reach to raise around half a million dollars during a 21-hour stream. And she put that money towards creating Alvaez Sanctuary. Today, the sanctuary continues to grow. Maya has more than a million YouTube subscribers.
[00:03:09] And her live stream cameras average 1,000 concurrent viewers. In our conversation, Maya and I get into why live streaming does something for conservation that no nature documentary ever could. We learn more about the digital zoo model she built and what's next for the sanctuary. Maya also makes the case for why being an influencer is actually kind of a superpower, if you know what you're doing.
[00:03:34] Maya is proof that the most interesting tech stories are always about the technology itself, but about what happens when someone points existing tools at a problem nobody else thought to solve that way. But before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break. Maya, welcome to TED Tech. Hello, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
[00:03:58] Maybe we can get started by, you know, talking about the fact that there's so many different ways that you could have created conservation content, right? But you decided to go to a platform like Twitch to bring people along this journey of you rehabilitating animals and, like, talking about these animals that you love and have grown up with essentially all your life.
[00:04:22] So tell me, what does live interacting streaming really give you that nothing else does? So I love live streaming. It's really, really cool because we have a live chat and so people are there in real time and so they can ask you things while you're streaming. So from an education perspective, too, it's really exciting to be able to talk to them in real time. The whole thing was kind of an accident, though, right?
[00:04:45] So when I started streaming in college, I started streaming for extra cash, really, and I was never going to do the wildlife stuff on Twitch. Mostly because my job was as a zookeeper and as an outreach zookeeper. I was bringing animals to schools and birthday parties and teaching kids about wildlife. And I thought that people needed that in-person experience. I thought that they needed to touch it, you know, and see it with their own eyes in person. And so I would have never really thought to combine the two.
[00:05:13] And it wasn't until I brought this hawk out on stream for the first time that people started showing a lot of interest and it went viral on Reddit. And that's kind of what started my career trajectory. But I didn't think that people would fall in love with animals that way. Turns out that they can. And it's awesome. Yeah. I'm curious, like, what were some of the early comments you are receiving from folks?
[00:05:37] Like, were people asking questions in the way that they would have if you were there educating them, you know, about an animal? Yes. Tons. Yeah. People have tons of questions. So I was a falconer in California for several years and I was streaming, you know, in the music section and chatting and cooking and streaming whatever. And so the idea that I had a hawk in my backyard, a red-tailed hawk, was shocking and confusing. So lots of questions about that. But it's also done in a really informal way.
[00:06:06] Live streaming doesn't feel like a lecture, like a college lecture. It does not feel like a class. It doesn't feel curated. It's very like this. Yeah. It's me talking to them and them talking back. Yeah. And they're around my age too. So it just feels easy. Yeah. I mean, because what was the demographic? It was like 17 to 28. Yeah, ish. Yeah. So you're getting this like Gen Z, like super, super late, like millennial age group of folks. And when I think Twitch, I think of gamers, right? Like that's what I always hear about. Yeah.
[00:06:35] And you're like on there with your bird, you know, working from home with your animal like on your shoulder, you know, and it's absolutely fascinating. And I find what you've created, you know, within your career and from such a unique way from like, hey, you could just be, you know, at home streaming on Twitch and, you know, with your animals. But you're like, wait, no, like, I think I can turn this into something even more impactful.
[00:07:03] What kind of gave you the vision to just keep going and seeing how far you could take this idea of streaming conservation education? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as long as I have the means being the financial support and the platform, I will do this for the rest of my life. It's we're reaching hundreds of millions of people a year across the globe. And our animals don't have to meet a single one of them in person.
[00:07:29] I think it's it's such a non-invasive way to do it. Our animals are so much less stressed about about having the public come through and visit in person. But they're still teaching so, so many people. So it's way too powerful to stop doing. I'll never stop doing it. It's kind of almost like their own like little documentary, like the real animals of Texas. Yes. Yes. It is like that. And what does that kind of continued education really do for, you know, conservation outcomes? Yeah.
[00:07:58] Well, I'll start with saying that there are a lot of really fantastic zoos in the nation. And I'm definitely not like I'm not saying that that's not a valid model. It totally is. And there's a lot. I mean, that's I came up loving animals because I saw animals in zoos. And there are some zoos that are doing incredible conservation work. So there's absolutely space for both. We are really lucky to not be open to the public and to be able to receive some animals that wouldn't do well at a public facility because they're real shy or anxious. And so their quality of life would just be terrible.
[00:08:27] So we're able to take in some of those animals that couldn't be at a traditional facility. And that's really exciting. But there's there's a lot of space for both. So with there being space for both traditional zoo models and our zoo model is there's there's a tradeoff to be had without seeing an animal in person and being able to feel it and touch it and see it with your your own eyes. And I think at traditional zoos, people will go through and you may spend a whole day at a zoo. Right.
[00:08:52] If it's a big enough zoo and you'll look at that animal and maybe you'll sit there for five minutes, 10 minutes, which is kind of a long time to stand outside of an enclosure at a zoo or, you know, there's a touch experience. And so you're hanging out that animal for a bit. But that's generally only done on one day and maybe maybe once a year. If you're a really avid zoo goer, maybe four times a year. But that's a lot to go to go visit a zoo. For us, we're open 24 seven virtually. And so people can visit our animals all the time.
[00:09:22] There are cameras in their enclosures 24 seven. They watch them eat every day. They watch our animal care staff clean up after them. They watch their waters get changed out. They watch what the animals do and nobody's there. And I think it helps them get to know them better. You know, they get the special access to the animals and they get to spend so much more time with them. And so I think that that kind of balances out that that that factor of not being able to see them in person.
[00:09:49] I'm curious if you're even getting feedback, you know, from other maybe organizations or even zoos themselves or maybe people are referencing the fact that like they're watching this live stream and it's made them fascinated maybe about zoology or just something related to conservation and particularly wildlife keeping. And so are you getting any of that? Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite things about this entire model in the nonprofit is that it makes it so accessible to people.
[00:10:18] So one of the things that I said in my talk is before social media, TV programming established some of the best examples of conservationists. So there were there was Steve Irwin and Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, which are heroes and they're incredible. But for a 20 year old that is not a biologist and is not working in the field, you know, in the boots and khakis, they don't see themselves in people like that. You know, it feels really far off.
[00:10:43] But with this new era of influencers in social media, I do live stream myself going to get coffee and I'll stream myself playing video games sometimes, you know, and whatever else I'm doing just as a person. And I think that they see themselves in me in ways that is really hard to see yourselves in like a magazine cover or a nature documentary. So it's becoming more accessible. I think there's a lot of young people that are seeing, oh, I could do this, you know, and I could I could change my career path.
[00:11:13] I could change I could decide what I study right now. And there are also these budding voters and budding consumers. So like, oh, I could make these decisions about who I'm voting for, what I'm voting for, what I'm consuming. And it's all very exciting. So I want to go back to the word influencer, because it, you know, can carry a bit of baggage and you're on a very male dominated platform. And, you know, a lot of times, especially in the space that you're in, but then also being, you know, obviously a woman content creator.
[00:11:40] There's a lot of stereotypes about what kind of content women create, what actually gets taken seriously. So, yeah, just curious about that experience for you. Yeah. The stereotype against influencers is really interesting to me. And it comes from this archetype that an influencer is like someone from L.A. who does fashion content and drinks like $22 smoothies and doesn't care about anybody else. That's not the case with the vast, vast, vast majority of influencers that I've met. Right. The term in itself is actually so cool and so powerful.
[00:12:10] It's like we have this platform and all of this influence. And so it's a really exciting thing to be an influencer, even if older people rolled their eyes at that term. I think that's why we kind of switched. Now we say content creator. But it's the same thing. And they're both very, very exciting. I'm curious about how you've navigated, you know, this space because you have the credentials. You have the following. Right. And you've clearly garnered an audience that, you know, I think you mentioned is like 65 percent male.
[00:12:40] And so there's clearly have to be, I assume, both the respect factor, but then also maybe some not so great experiences. Right. Being in a male dominated space comes with its problems. Absolutely. And there's it takes more to prove to a male audience into a male dominated space that you have the same credentials that a man has for sure.
[00:13:00] But it's also really wonderful as a conservationist to have the access to this audience because it's hard to reach young people in conservation. People are conservationists are usually reaching young kids like in classrooms and schools or they're reaching older people that are birders, you know, are already into it. But this middle group, these voters, consumers, up and coming decision makers, these young people, they're hard to reach. Young men, harder to reach.
[00:13:29] And so I'm stoked to be to be in this space and to access them because it's really hard. I think there's something brilliant there that we all can kind of learn from you in terms of how do we reach this generation that does have its own level of influence and get them interested and fascinating and participating because that's the other side to it as well. It's like, yeah, I'm giving five dollars, but like I'm I'm participating. You're part of it. Yeah, I'm part of it.
[00:13:53] I'm part of it in a way that no one's ever probably engaged me unless like, you know, you're watching Shark Week every year like me, you know, on the Discovery Channel. Right. Yeah. So, no, I think that's I think that's super fascinating and really honest as well that, you know, the online space, particularly for women, can look very different. Yes. You know, just depending on every space. Every space can look really different. Yeah. No, amazing. Yeah.
[00:14:18] This is this is such an interesting like aspect to the creator economy that I would have just never imagined was taking place. But but when I when I think of you and I watched you on the TED stage, I was like, wow, like, you know, I think about like my nieces who are super fascinated in like marine biology, like who could even carve for themselves a different kind of career path. Right. Right.
[00:14:41] Leveraging these technical tools that are really simple, but are essentially charting their own path. So I don't know if you've thought about that. Right. Because you're doing something new that's been uncharted for the most part. I mean, with like foundational, you know, aspects of of a zookeeping career, but in such a different way from an entrepreneurial lens. Right. But yeah. But I'm also thinking like, oh, my gosh, there's going to be millions of Mayas that are bringing something very new to this space. Yeah.
[00:15:12] Yeah. We live in a very interesting age where. Literally anybody could build a business with this box in their hand whenever they want. And we have all these social media platforms and you can you can build your own platform and it doesn't have to be millions of followers. Some people have 100 followers and that's on Instagram. It's not a lot of followers, but that's a lot of people. That's a lot.
[00:15:39] If you're talking in a room of 100 people, holy cow, that's a lot of people. And so everybody has a platform now and everybody has the power to do good things with it. So exciting. And because there's so many people on social media now, it's very likely if you try to grow your own platform that you will have more than 100 followers and then you have a thousand. And it's that's a lot of people. I mean, that's the whole TED stage. Yeah. You're on the TED stage. Yeah. And you can make a difference. Yeah.
[00:16:09] So it's exciting. This gets a little bit into the technical side of things. Sure. You know, what gaps you're seeing could be opportunities even for different kinds of features. Right. Because it's not just like a donate here button. Right. It's like a you can feed the cow treats. Right. You know, was it Winnie the Moo? Winnie the Moo. Yeah. Like I can't wait to get back on my laptop to go and get like, yeah, to feed Winnie the Moo treats. It's in these very specific actions.
[00:16:37] But I also see the potential feedback loop happening with what you're doing to improve technical tools, to be able to have this impact. Use this in such a unique way. You almost have this ability to improve, you know, the tools. Yeah. And like add in things that are saying like that help like the next potential creator say, I want to use this platform in this way with this kind of impact. And like it's going to be easier for me to do that if I had X, Y and Z features. Right. Yeah.
[00:17:07] Features is a big question and it's different for every single platform. I think that one of the most important things. So we're a nonprofit. So one of the most important things for us is fundraising. That's how we stay afloat. And so the fundraising tools on every platform are so different. So different. It's really one of the reasons that live streaming fundraising works so well, I think, is that it's in real time. And so you can acknowledge the donors in real time, which is fun.
[00:17:32] Like it's not just donating 20 bucks and then getting an email, you know, an hour later. That's a copy pasted. Thank you. It's the thing that you're watching. It comes in in real time. And then the creator says, thank you for the $20 donation. And you're a part of it. Yeah. And so I think that's why it works so well with live streaming. Especially when we kind of think like this almost loneliness generation. Right. There's like someone that I can tune into. There's something I can learn. There's animals that I can watch.
[00:18:00] And there has to just be an aspect of a social connection that connects you to something greater than yourself. Yeah. That I can imagine that people are experiencing with you. Yeah. And it'll never be the same. It'll never be enough to just be online. Like obviously get outside and connect with people and make those meaningful relationships. But having there's a community for everybody online. On every platform. Like on Facebook there's like groups for people that love squirrels. You know.
[00:18:29] And they just post pictures of squirrels. And humans need to feel like they're a part of something. They need to feel like they're a part of a group and that they fit in somewhere. And so social media gives that to you. Not just in your phone but in every app. And that feels good to people. Yeah. No. Absolutely. What I thought was really fascinating about your story is that you kind of started off like streaming. Get a little bit of cash. You know. I'm a college student. Extra cash is always the name of the game.
[00:18:59] But you've also used this platform in a new way to raise funding for many of these initiatives. Including helping colleagues like raise funds. And most recently your podcast Conservation Cast. It raised over $92,000 across 60 plus episodes by platforming scientists with niche audiences. Now what does that tell you?
[00:19:21] Or what do you believe that tells us about the untapped fundraising power that sits inside these like very highly niche subject matter communities? Yeah. You use the word untapped which is funny because Alvaeus is. So when I started fundraising on Twitch I used to say all the time that Twitch is an untapped reservoir for doing good. Or live streaming is an untapped reservoir for doing good. And Alvaeus is reservoir in Latin. So that's where the name comes from.
[00:19:48] But generally our donations are crowdsourced. So they're generally smaller donations. I mean we're talking like $5, $10, $20, maybe $100 increments from just a lot of people. And doing it with live streaming has been incredible. And not really something that I predicted. It's not like I'm a genius and thought that this would be a great idea. It's just I've gotten very lucky to be in this position.
[00:20:13] But there's something about being live and everyone being there at the same time and being a part of this moment together. That brings everyone together and makes everybody feel really committed to a cause. And so fundraising live has been really powerful because of that feeling. And you have plans to double the size of Alvaeus in 2026. What does that look like? What does that scale look like? And then also it seems like a lot of the models also dependent upon your personal audience and your presence as well.
[00:20:42] So I'm curious about what this doubling looks like and how that's going to be executed. Yeah. So we just bought – we're on 15 acres but we just bought another 15 acres. So now we're 30 acres. So we're doubling in size literally and we're building this new Alvaez Research and Recovery Institute on the additional 15 acres. So we'll start those breeding programs for endangered species there. And then for me as a creator, I treat my platforms like a funnel for the sanctuary and for the nonprofit.
[00:21:09] So the bigger that I get as a content creator, the more people I can push towards the nonprofit and the more education I can do. So I will do what I can in the next few years to grow. But, you know, it's part of the game. So that's absolutely incredible. It's fun. I love it. It's really cool that it worked out this way. How do you even see just the future of conservation education, you know, playing out? And especially because you're leveraging this in such a – it's such a really unique way and like fostering these audiences in such unique ways. Yeah.
[00:21:39] I think that the word conservationist is a scary one. Like no one wants to call themselves a conservationist. Even me. I mean I do now. But a few years ago I was like that's too much of a title. That's scary. I don't know where that comes from. I don't know if it comes from the models that we had being so amazing, you know, and far off or if it comes from academia making it feel like it's something that we can't all do.
[00:22:03] But Jane Goodall said you cannot go a single day in your life without having an impact and you have to decide what that impact is. Every single person is making an impact every day. And we can do small things in conservation like – I mean we can save a spider, you know. We can plant a pollinator garden. We can build an animal sanctuary and rescue a bunch of animals. How many species on the planet have the power to intentionally save individuals or species?
[00:22:33] Us, you know. And that's so cool and so exciting. So I think for future and conservation we need to make it more accessible. People need to hear that and they need to feel like they're an environmentalist and they're a conservationist because it really – I mean it's all of us. Yeah. I'm curious about how this model scales I think beyond just you, right? Either cities or states or people like adopting a very similar model of like, hey, like let's build this digital zoo.
[00:22:57] Let's like create this like protected space and land to support endangered species. We've worked with a few other facilities about – that are open to the public about getting live cameras up and running because they have the enclosures and they have the animals anyway. And one of the beautiful things about the live cameras, while you're watching them, it's generating ad revenue for the sanctuary too. So just watching them for free is supporting the sanctuary.
[00:23:23] And so I've tried to explain that to other facilities too where you just need the startup infrastructure costs and then you have the cameras and then you have your live streaming all the time. Also as a zookeeper, incredible to be able – it's like a baby monitor. You can check in on the animals all the time. I don't know how I was a zookeeper without cameras, honestly. So that part is really wonderful as well. And so I would love to see more AZA zoos get on board with live cameras.
[00:23:49] I think that it could do wonders for facilities like that and fundraising and reach. The technology itself, like you said, like baby monitors, right? To kind of check in on these animals. Yes. So it seems very, very simple, right? Like this is kind of like easy platforms. I think sometimes we tend to overthink what technology has to do to have an impact. And is there a world in which you ever feel like you would want to do something a little bit more involved technically?
[00:24:19] But when it comes to also gathering more data, you know, on these animals, is that something that ever crosses your mind or looks like something that you would be interested in the future? Yeah, in a few ways. One of those ways is as we get into endangered species work, we need to understand what's happening to them after we release them to know how to manage those populations better. And so that's where trackers and technology like that come into play. And so we'll get involved in those fields over the next few years and see what they look like. And then another way is citizen science.
[00:24:49] So citizen science is a really, really great way both to bring people together and to generate a ton of data. And I was at this invertebrate conference in Tucson a while ago, and they were talking about the citizen science bumblebee project that they were doing. And they gathered 400 bumblebee observations, which is a lot for a bumblebee project and a citizen science project in general.
[00:25:10] And then we thought at Alvaez, if 400 is a lot of observations, we have to get into citizen science now because we average 1,000 viewers at a time on our live cameras. And so we could get so much data from all over the world so fast. And so we're building this pollinator garden where users can capture pictures of invertebrates that are visiting different flowers. And for them, it'll feel like a video game. And on the back end, we'll have all this information about what pollinators are visiting, what flowers, what plants.
[00:25:40] And we'll be able to share that information with scientists, researchers to figure out how we can manage those populations better. So we are working on mobilizing our audience for science, for sure. That's incredible. Yeah, it's exciting. So I want to ask, because I loved seeing your pictures of you when you were younger, like growing up on a farm and just interacting with animals at such a young age.
[00:26:06] And so I want to know, like, what advice would you give younger Maya who's starting these big endeavors, right, and walking this really unique journey? So I grew up in the Silicon Valley, actually. And so I grew up in a very, very competitive school district. So I was constantly thinking about school and extracurriculars and A's and overachieving and all of those things, which partly is a great thing.
[00:26:35] I mean, that's why I founded a nonprofit and I'm here. But the fun stuff, the stuff that I loved, the being outside with the animals and in the mud and whatever always felt really secondary to me growing up. Like, it felt like that was what I did in my fun time and I didn't have a lot of fun time. Turns out everything that I learned as a kid doing that is the most valuable information that I use today, you know.
[00:26:58] And so I wish I gave myself a little bit more bandwidth to soak in the things that I loved as a kid instead of what I thought I should be doing. Because you're only a kid once, you know. And so that's my number one. And then number two is I wish I got help sooner. I mean, I juggled a lot when I started this whole thing and I think I juggled too much for too long. And delegating is awesome, especially when the people you hire are smarter than you.
[00:27:27] It's that everything just goes through the roof. Yeah. And I mean, those are the tuition you pay for entrepreneurship. Yeah. Like, you kind of get it wrong for a really long time and then you start getting it right in really unique ways. But that's excellent. I'm sure Little Maya would be extremely proud of you. I hope so. Yeah. I looked at my mom in the audience when those pictures were up, which was a mistake. I looked at her. She didn't know those were going to go on the screen. And I saw her and she's crying. And I was like, I can't. I can't.
[00:27:56] I will not look at that woman for the rest of my talk. Like, I physically avoid that side of the audience for the rest of my talk. I was like, I cannot look at her. I know she's so proud. I love that she was here for it. Yeah. Yeah. She loved it. Amazing. Amazing. Well, Maya, again, thank you so much for joining us today. Of course. Thank you for having me. TED Tech is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. And the show is fact-checked by Julia Dickerson.
[00:28:23] Special thanks to Constanza, Gallardo, Daniela, Galareso, Maria Ladias, Tanzika Sangmanivan, and Roxanne Heilash. If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so other people can find us too. I'm Sherelle Dorsey. Let's keep digging into the future. Join me next week for more. Thank you.