The wildlife sanctuary that lives entirely online

The Internet is endless. Usually that means endless scrolling, endless ads, endless noise. But sometimes it means endless possibilities.

Take Maya Higa. In college, she worked as a zookeeper, bringing animals to classrooms to teach kids about wildlife. Then she found Twitch. After a video of her rehabilitating a red-tailed hawk named Bean went viral, she realized she could reach thousands of people at once instead of twenty.

So at 22, she built something nobody had really tried before: an animal sanctuary that nobody visits in person.

A sanctuary without parking lots

Maya raised $573,000 during a single 21-hour live stream (and shaved her head in the process) to buy land in Austin, Texas. Today, Alveus Sanctuary is home to rescued parrots, emus, marmosets, and a cow named Winnie the Moo.

Because the sanctuary is closed to the public, it works differently than a traditional zoo:

• Less stress for the animals. They're blissfully unaware of their audience, free from the unpredictability of in-person crowds.
• No wasted dollars. Every donation goes straight to animal care and conservation, not gift shops, concession stands, or parking lots.
• Radical accessibility. Anyone with an Internet connection can visit for free, 24 hours a day, across 36 live cameras.

Meeting the next generation where they are

Before social media, most of us learned about conservation from legends on TV. Today, viewers can actually participate in real time.

At Alveus, viewers don't just watch, they interact. A $5 donation triggers an automated feeder that dispenses treats to Winnie the cow. That single treat feeder has raised over $38,000 for the sanctuary.

By bringing these animals to Twitch, Maya is reaching people who didn't know they cared about conservation yet. In 2025, her educational streams reached over 250 million people, mostly 17-to-28-year-olds. She's building the next generation of conservationists by meeting them exactly where they already hang out.