An hour past the Austin sprawl, strip malls give way to rolling wilderness, and the roads transform from asphalt to gravel.
When I arrive at the entrance to Alveus Sanctuary, I drive slowly, gazing out the window at familiar surroundings. It's a smooth ride now, but back in July, the Central Texas Floods wiped out this road. For a brief moment, the sanctuary's forty-plus animal residents were in danger of missing out on critical resources, like meals and medications— never mind the humans who work here every day.
If you're a regular Twitch viewer, there's a decent chance you've seen this road before, too. Top streamers from around the country began descending on Alveus in July—offering up not only their physical assistance in digging and draining water, but also their collective audiences. At several points across the assembled streams, “over one hundred thousand people were watching live,” Alveus director Maya Higa tells me, as we stand here on the road.
There is a level of reverence that folks reserve for talking about Maya. Her peers (other streamers) may enjoy gassing themselves up — for one to go live every day, it’s a feature of the occupation, not a bug — but they all seem to ascribe Maya’s unique strain of chatter to a higher purpose. “She is saving the world,” her friend and former podcast co-host QTCinderella said in July. Scientists and researchers who know her tend to marvel at Maya’s ability to distill convoluted information on conservation and the environment into a substance that even scroll-happy, vertical video viewers can get behind. And upon visiting Alveus, which Maya founded when she was just twenty-one, CBS News came away from Texas with a bold proclamation: They’d found “Gen Z’s Jane Goodall.”
I ask Maya for her thoughts on being compared to one of the world’s most renowned conservationists.“I would never, ever give myself that title,” she responds. “They’re massive shoes to fill.”
“But people use it a lot to describe me now, which is cool,” she follows up.
That newfound visibility comes with hig her expectations, which is why we’re here, in Texas. Because Maya (alongside the animals and humans who call Alveus home) has been hiding in plain sight these past six years, refashioning Twitch—best known for gaming “Let’s Plays” and loud, young men barking—as a tool to, say, share fun facts about insects—and raise some money along the way.
In a moment when research funding has been gutted across the board and attacks on science become ever more normalized, Alveus has built its foundation on an alternative path. Not only as a vehicle for virtual education, but also a platform, to shine a spotlight on the work of researchers around the world—and, in the near future, maybe offer its partners even more.
“When we're reaching tens of millions [of viewers] a year…that does really matter,” Maya tells me. “We can mobilize so many people, and there's a lot of hope in that. It's our job to stay really positive, and to let people know that our planet has a chance—because it does.”
For the purposes of this piece, over the last two months, I spoke with a dozen scientists, researchers, creators, and viewers. There were two questions I set out to answer.
First, are Maya, the Streamer and Maya, the Conservationist poised to meet the current moment?
And second, what’s gained and lost when science is predominantly communicated— and consumed—over social media?
I.
The first animal Maya introduces me to at Alveus is a friendly horse named Ace, who saddles up to me and leans over, silently implying that yes, I should probably pet him.
Unlike the other animals at Alveus, Ace is not here to be rehabilitated. No, he’s been right by Maya’s side since she was twelve, following her all the way from her childhood home in the Bay Area to her current residence near Austin.
Ace had another pit stop in between, too. “I think it’s pretty unique for a kid to take their horse to college,” Vicki Amon-Higa, Maya’s mom, tells me over a video call. “But if you’re truly in love with your horse, and you’re a horse person, of course you’re going to take your horse to college.”
According to Vicki, Maya learned to ride horses at age four. Their farm played home to a pig named Bella, a goat named Fro-Yo, and a cat named Nachi. For some families, the extra tenants may have created an unruly environment, but Vicki normalized this slice of life early on for her kids. “I grew up in the sticks, a hundred miles north of the Bay,” Vicki says. “There were no stoplights in my small town. It was definitely the country.”
The youngest of four, Maya took the most interest in agriculture, following in her mom’s footsteps and joining 4-H at an early age. “It’s kind of like Girl Scouts, but for animals,” Maya says. Vicki credits the program with helping her daughter gain confidence with public speaking, noting that Maya was “the president of the largest Silicon Valley 4-H club” in high school.
When she went off to college three hours south in San Luis Obispo, Maya missed living with animals, so she took a volunteer opportunity at a local zoo. “I started developing a love for conservation that I didn’t know I had,” she tells me. “I’ve always been really passionate about the planet—that’s why I wanted to [work in] agriculture—but the zoo made me realize that conservation, sustainability…there’s a lot of overlap there.”
“Once I started the zoo internship, there was no going back.”
Her coworkers became alligators and black bears, exotic parrots and Patagonian maras. Many of the species were vulnerable, if not critically endangered. “I just wanted to protect all of them,” she says.
Maya didn’t know it yet, but the seeds of Alveus were planted during that internship. All it took was a red-tailed hawk named Bean— and a clip going viral on Reddit.
The first animal Maya introduces me to at Alveus is a friendly horse named Ace, who saddles up to me and leans over, silently implying that yes, I should probably pet him.
Unlike the other animals at Alveus, Ace is not here to be rehabilitated. No, he’s been right by Maya’s side since she was twelve, following her all the way from her childhood home in the Bay Area to her current residence near Austin.
Ace had another pit stop in between, too. “I think it’s pretty unique for a kid to take their horse to college,” Vicki Amon-Higa, Maya’s mom, tells me over a video call. “But if you’re truly in love with your horse, and you’re a horse person, of course you’re going to take your horse to college.”
According to Vicki, Maya learned to ride horses at age four. Their farm played home to a pig named Bella, a goat named Fro-Yo, and a cat named Nachi. For some families, the extra tenants may have created an unruly environment, but Vicki normalized this slice of life early on for her kids. “I grew up in the sticks, a hundred miles north of the Bay,” Vicki says. “There were no stoplights in my small town. It was definitely the country.”
The youngest of four, Maya took the most interest in agriculture, following in her mom’s footsteps and joining 4-H at an early age. “It’s kind of like Girl Scouts, but for animals,” Maya says. Vicki credits the program with helping her daughter gain confidence with public speaking, noting that Maya was “the president of the largest Silicon Valley 4-H club” in high school.
When she went off to college three hours south in San Luis Obispo, Maya missed living with animals, so she took a volunteer opportunity at a local zoo. “I started developing a love for conservation that I didn’t know I had,” she tells me. “I’ve always been really passionate about the planet—that’s why I wanted to [work in] agriculture—but the zoo made me realize that conservation, sustainability…there’s a lot of overlap there.”
“Once I started the zoo internship, there was no going back.”
Her coworkers became alligators and black bears, exotic parrots and Patagonian maras. Many of the species were vulnerable, if not critically endangered. “I just wanted to protect all of them,” she says.
Maya didn’t know it yet, but the seeds of Alveus were planted during that internship. All it took was a red-tailed hawk named Bean— and a clip going viral on Reddit.
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