The Wildlife Sanctuary You Can Visit from Anywhere | Maya Higa | TED

0:04 So, my mission is to use the internet

0:06 to build our next generation of conservationists.

0:09 And I have not been doing this for all that long, okay?

0:11 I was born in 1998.

0:12 So, I will get that out of the way right off the bat.

0:15 But, I'll tell you guys how I got started.

0:16 So, I grew up on a farm and I always loved animals.

0:19 So, we had rabbits and horses and chickens and you name it,

0:23 we had it and I loved it.

0:25 So then when I was 18 and in college, naturally, I got a job as a zookeeper.

0:31 So I put on this safari outfit and I would bring animals like

0:34 kangaroos and lemurs to schools and birthday

0:36 parties to teach kids about wildlife.

0:39 So a pretty cool job.

0:40 It was really awesome.

0:41 So then one night after work, I met some friends online who were

0:45 live streaming themselves playing video games on Twitch.

0:48 And I had no idea what that meant.

0:50 But I learned that I could broadcast myself

0:52 live on this website doing whatever I wanted.

0:55 So I could cook or I could sing or I could play video games.

0:58 And if people enjoyed watching it, they would send me tips.

1:01 So cash, like actual real money.

1:05 And as a college student, that's pretty freaking sweet.

1:09 So I started streaming to about 10 viewers at a time almost every day.

1:14 Then one night after one of these live streams,

1:16 I got a call from a zookeeper friend about this redtailed

1:19 hawk who had been hit by a car and he needed help.

1:22 So we brought Bean, that's what we called him,

1:25 home to my college house and I started to rehabilitate him in my backyard.

1:31 So then one night I'm live streaming, I'm cooking,

1:33 I'm talking about this new hawk in my backyard

1:36 and one of my viewers didn't believe me.

1:39 They didn't believe that I had a bird in my backyard and I could not have that.

1:43 So, I put my falconry glove on and I brought the bird inside to show them,

1:48 of course, because I have a problem.

1:50 And one of the people watching this stream made a short video

1:53 of this moment and they shared it on Reddit and it went viral.

1:58 So, my viewership shot up overnight

2:00 and I started live streaming Bean's rehabilitation process.

2:04 So, I'd call him from this perch to my glove and the people

2:06 watching my streams started becoming as invested as I was in his recovery.

2:11 It was like they were doing it with me sort

2:13 of which was the coolest thing that I've ever done.

2:16 And then eventually because I was reaching so many people with Bean Story,

2:19 the zoo that I worked at started allowing me to bring

2:22 animals like cockatos and reptiles home to present on my live stream.

2:29 So suddenly somehow I had turned this zoo outreach job

2:33 that I had into a work from home situation, right?

2:37 Which is awesome.

2:38 But instead of reaching 20 kids at a time in a classroom,

2:41 I was reaching thousands of people at a time all over the world.

2:46 So this was when it really clicked for me, right?

2:48 I wanted to do this for the rest of my life,

2:51 but I wanted to do it at a much much larger scale.

2:55 So then two years later at 22 years old, I came up with a plan.

2:58 And the vision was to build an animal sanctuary that nobody visits,

3:03 or at least not in person.

3:04 So, we would rescue animals and build huge animal

3:07 enclosures and we would live stream conservation education programs online

3:12 so people could fall in love with our animals

3:13 the way that they fell in love with Bean, that bird.

3:16 Our animals would be able to reach millions and millions of people

3:20 without having to meet a single one of them in person.

3:24 And then of course I would fund raise all of the capital to do

3:28 all of these things and build this entire facility in one single live stream,

3:33 which is the craziest idea that I've ever had.

3:35 But this is crazier.

3:37 It worked somehow.

3:39 So I'm live streaming one day and there's some Oh, thank you.

3:42 Whoa.

3:43 I'll take a pause.

3:44 Thank you so much.

3:46 So, I'm live streaming one day and someone in my live chat said,

3:50 "Maya, if we raise $500,000, would you shave your head on stream?" And I said,

3:57 "Yeah, duh." Because who who wouldn't do that?

4:00 Who in the right room wouldn't do that?

4:01 Apparently, that was pretty motivating, though,

4:04 because over the course of a 21-hour long live stream,

4:07 we fundraised $573,000 to build the sanctuary.

4:16 So, I bought some land in Austin, Texas,

4:18 started building animal enclosures, and I started growing my hair back.

4:21 And that takes about two years, in case anyone was curious.

4:24 And these screens are huge.

4:28 That is a huge picture of me bald in front of a lot of people.

4:31 Okay, so next up was rescuing animals.

4:36 Okay, so OA and Momo are marmicetses.

4:38 They're these very tiny, very, very charming new world monkeys.

4:42 Someone originally bought them as pets online,

4:44 but then after years of inadequate care,

4:46 they were brought to us for rehabilitation.

4:48 So, they now live at Alveas to help

4:49 teach people about the exploitation of primates in the pet trade and about

4:53 the importance of conserving their rainforest habitats, too.

4:56 They also have a little iPad to play games on now.

5:00 Very very cute.

5:02 Finn is an American red fox who was

5:04 confiscated from the illegal pet trade in California.

5:07 So he and his best friend Reed now live at Alveas

5:09 to help teach people about the nightmare that is the fur trade,

5:12 helping to build a new generation of fur-free consumers.

5:17 Then there's Winnie the Moo.

5:20 She's a cow.

5:21 She was rescued from a beef operation in Oklahoma.

5:23 She lives at Alves to help teach people about commercial

5:25 agriculture and how it impacts animal welfare and our planet.

5:29 One way that viewers can support the sanctuary is by feeding Winnie treats.

5:32 So, a $5 donation made online results

5:35 in treats being dispensed via this automated feeder.

5:39 To date, that treat feeder has generated

5:42 over $38,000 in funding for the sanctuary.

5:47 Isn't that crazy?

5:50 It's a lot of treats.

5:51 She's very happy cow.

5:55 Since 2019, through live streaming,

5:57 I have raised over $7.5 million for conservation causes across the globe.

6:08 In 2025 alone, we reached over

6:11 250 million people with conservation education online.

6:17 It's over 10 million classrooms just like the ones that I

6:20 was bringing zoo animals to in college just in the last year.

6:24 Alves is now home to rescued parrots

6:27 and emus and monkeys and wolf dogs and more.

6:30 And we have those 36 cameras that are live streaming them 24 hours a day.

6:35 But the beautiful thing about these live cameras is our animals are all

6:39 blissfully unaware of the thousands of eyes on them at any given time.

6:44 Not being open to the public means that our animals are

6:47 less stressed by the unpredictable factors

6:48 that come with people visiting, right?

6:51 It also means that we've never had to divert any of our funding

6:54 to guest experiences like gift shops and concession stands and parking lots.

7:00 But one of the most positive benefits is we've developed

7:02 one of the most accessible zoom models in the world.

7:06 Anyone with an internet connection can visit our animals

7:09 for free from their device on from anywhere on the planet.

7:13 And they do.

7:15 Our online demographic, our online community,

7:17 they range from about 17 to 28 years old.

7:20 We are our nation's new voters,

7:23 new consumers, and upand cominging decision makers.

7:26 We hold the future of this planet in our hands.

7:30 But most of our online community didn't even

7:32 join with an interest in environmentalism at all.

7:34 They are just normal people,

7:36 internet users who stumbled across our content in one of their many, many feeds.

7:40 Alvea Sanctuary brings conservation to young people largely by meeting

7:44 them where they already are which is on social media.

7:49 But before social media,

7:50 TV programming was establishing the best examples of conservationists, right?

7:54 Heroes like Steve Irwin and David Atenboroough and Jane Goodall.

8:00 These are obviously some of my personal heroes.

8:03 Probably some of yours as well as they should be.

8:05 These guys rock, right?

8:07 But for most of us, it can be really hard to see ourselves in such legends.

8:11 It leaves us feeling like that work is

8:12 just a far-off dream that only other people achieve.

8:16 But at Alveas, that dream doesn't feel so far off.

8:19 For our viewers, Alveas is a dream that one of them achieved from within a space

8:24 that they're already a part of, and they get to be a part of it all live.

8:31 So, we're just getting started.

8:32 Our next step is taking this Alveas approach to the wild.

8:35 We're building a new facility where we're going to breed

8:37 endangered species at Elves for reintroduction and release into the wild.

8:42 We're starting with the recovery of critically endangered wolves.

8:46 Our sincere hope is that people will fall in love

8:48 with these wolves the way that they fell in love with Bean,

8:50 that bird from college.

8:52 We hope that they'll care really deeply about these individuals and then

8:56 in turn about the wild places that we return them to.

9:00 Millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of brand new

9:04 conservationists fighting for wildlife and wild

9:07 places all doing it from their homes.

9:11 So my mission is to use the internet

9:14 to build our next generation of conservationists.

9:16 And I think it's working.

9:18 Thank you.

9:22 Thank you.