The wildlife sanctuary you can visit from anywhere | Maya Higa

0:03You'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 Alvius Sanctuary in Austin, Texas, a wildlife rescue powered entirely by people online from all over the world.

0:48In 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. That's coming up right after a short break.

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3:32And now our TED Talk of the day. 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. Okay, 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 put on this safari outfit, and I would bring animals like kangaroos and lemurs to schools and birthday parties to teach kids about wildlife.

4:10So you have a pretty cool job. It was really awesome. So then one night after work, I met some friends online who were live-streaming 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 frickin' sweet. So I started streaming to about 10 viewers at a time almost every day. Then one night after one of these live streams, I got a call from a zookeeper friend about this red-tailed hawk who had been hit by a car and he needed help.

4:53So 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 live streaming, I'm cooking, I'm talking about this new hawk in my backyard. And one of my viewers didn't believe me. 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 live streaming Bean's rehabilitation process.

5:35So 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's story, the zoo that I worked at started allowing me to bring animals like cockatoos and reptiles home to present on my live stream. So suddenly, somehow, I had turned this zoo outreach job that I had into a work-from-home situation, right? 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.

6:17So 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 live stream 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.

6:56And then, of course, I would fundraise all of the capital to do all of these things and build this entire facility in one single live stream, which is the craziest idea that I've ever had. But this is crazier. It worked somehow. So I'm live streaming one day and there's some... Oh, thank you. Whoa. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. So I'm live streaming one day, and someone in my live chat said, Maya, if we raise$500 ,000, would you shave your head on stream? And I said, yeah, duh. Because who wouldn't do that? Who in the right mind wouldn't do that? Apparently, that was pretty motivating, though, because over the course of a 21-hour-long live stream, we fundraised$573 ,000.

7:42haulers to build the sanctuary. 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. Okay, 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 Alveas to help teach people about the exploitation of primates in the pet trade and about the importance of conserving their rainforest habitats, too.

8:20They also have a little iPad to play games on now. 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 Alveas 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.

8:56So a$5 donation made online results in treats being dispensed via this automated feeder. To date, that tree feeder has generated over$38 ,000 in funding for the sanctuary. Isn't that crazy? That's a lot of trees. She's a very happy cow. Since 2019, through live streaming, I have raised over$7.5 million for conservation causes across the globe.

9:32In 2025 alone, we reached over 250 million people with conservation education online. It's over 10 million classrooms, just like the ones that I was bringing zoo animals to in college just in the last year. Alvaes is now home to rescued parrots and emus and monkeys and wolf dogs and more, and we have those 36 cameras that are live-streaming 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.

10:14It 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 Zoom 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.

10:58They are just normal people, internet users who stumbled across our content in one of their many, many feeds. Alvea Sanctuary brings conservation to young people, largely by meeting them where they already are, which is on social media. But before social media, TV programming was establishing the best examples of conservationists, right? Heroes like Steve Irwin and David Hattonborough and Jane Goodall. These are obviously some of my personal heroes, probably some of yours as well as they should be. These guys rock, right? But for most of us, it can be really hard to see ourselves in such legends.

11:35It leaves us feeling like that work is just a far-off dream that only other people achieve. But at Alves, that dream doesn't feel so far off. For our viewers, Alves is a dream that one of them achieved from within a space that they're already a part of. And they get to be a part of it all live. So we're just getting started. Our next step is taking this Alvaeus approach to the wild. We're building a new facility where we're going to breed endangered species at Alvaeus for reintroduction and release into the wild. We're starting with the recovery of critically endangered wolves. Our sincere hope is that people will fall in love with these wolves the way that they fell in love with Bean, that bird from college.

12:16We hope that they'll care really deeply about these individuals and then, in turn, about the wild places that we return them to. Millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of brand-new conservationists fighting for wildlife and wild places, all doing it from their homes. So my mission is to use the Internet to build our next generation of conservationists. And I think it's working. Thank you.

12:45Oh, thank you.

12:54That was Maya Higa at TED 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Fazey-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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