Maya Higa

Early Life and Path to Conservation

Maya Elaine Higa was born on May 24, 1998, in Northern California. She grew up on a farm as the youngest of four siblings, with a Japanese-Okinawan father and an American mother. This rural upbringing fostered an early connection with animals and the natural world. Her academic path confirmed this interest. She attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, graduating in June 2020 with a bachelor's degree in agricultural education and communication.

While in college, Higa gained hands-on experience through internships at several wildlife organizations, including Zoo to You Conservation Ambassadors, Charles Paddock Zoo, and the Free Flight Exotic Bird Sanctuary. Her work involved outreach education and the care of exotic animals, providing a practical foundation for her future career in conservation and public engagement. This blend of formal education and direct animal husbandry positioned her to later communicate complex conservation topics to a broad online audience.

The Viral Start of a Streaming Career

Maya Higa began streaming on Twitch in February 2019, initially focusing on singing content after encouragement from friends who had seen a clip of her singing on Instagram. She used these music streams as a way to become more comfortable performing in front of people. Her channel gained significant traction just two months later when a clip from a falconry livestream featuring her juvenile red-tailed hawk, Bean, went viral on Reddit. This early success demonstrated an audience appetite for animal-related content.

In May 2019, she leveraged her growing platform for charity, holding a 21st birthday stream to raise funds for the 5 Cities Homeless Coalition, a local organization where she had previously volunteered. This event attracted attention from local news media. Her content quickly evolved beyond music to regularly include falconry and conservation education. In July 2019, she launched the Conservation Cast podcast, which featured experts from major wildlife organizations like the American Eagle Foundation, Save the Rhino, and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. The podcast raised over $92,000 across 63 episodes for global wildlife protection groups.

She also started a YouTube channel in August 2019 to host highlights from her streams, including IRL streams and vlogs. By October 2020, her expertise led to a position on the board of directors for a wildlife rehabilitation center in Central Texas, where her role focused specifically on raptor rehabilitation and husbandry.

Founding Alveus Sanctuary and Response to Controversy

The defining moment of Maya Higa's career came in February 2021 with a marathon 21-hour charity stream. The event, which featured an auction of items donated by prominent streamers and celebrities, raised $573,000 to establish the Alveus Sanctuary, a non-profit exotic animal sanctuary and virtual education center based in Austin, Texas. Notable auction items included a golden shovel from Sodapoppin, Gucci loafers from T-Pain, and a signed jersey from xQc. The highest bid was $53,000 from Ludwig Ahgren for a one-hour gaming session with Shroud. To celebrate reaching her $500,000 goal, Higa shaved her head, fulfilling a promise made to her viewers. That same month, she also joined the governing board of the Make-a-Wish Foundation in Central and South Texas.

Alveus Sanctuary became the central pillar of her work, blending physical animal care with digital outreach. In March 2022, she was featured in the World Woman Hour digital series highlighting inspirational women. She also co-hosted the inaugural Streamer Awards show with QTCinderella. Later that month, she launched Conservation Uncharted, a travel livestream series that began with a whale-watching trip in collaboration with Whale and Dolphin Conservation, raising over $4,000 in under two hours.

In September 2022, Higa faced significant controversy when she and Mizkif were accused by fellow streamer Trainwreckstv of downplaying and covering up an incident where another streamer allegedly sexually assaulted a female streamer. Higa denied covering up sexual assault, apologized for her involvement, and took a temporary hiatus from streaming. After a two-month break, she returned in November 2022, stating her intent to stream less on her main channel and reorient her efforts into producing educational conservation content for Alveus Sanctuary.

Mainstream Recognition and Conservation Expansion

From 2023 onward, Higa's conservation work achieved widespread recognition and scale. By January 2023, she had raised over $1 million collectively from viewer donations on Twitch. She became an ambassador for Whale and Dolphin Conservation and collaborated with Twitch in April 2023 to host Nerve Center, a sponsored education show based at Alveus Sanctuary featuring other online creators. In October 2023, she co-hosted The Gala for Good charity auction with QTCinderella, raising over $250,000 for five non-profit environmental organizations including the Rainforest Alliance and World Wildlife Fund.

Her influence continued to grow in 2024, with analytics firm Stream Hatchet listing her as the 10th most-watched female streamer across all platforms in April and the fifth most-watched in May. The following year was marked by major milestones. In January 2025, she reached one million subscribers on YouTube. In March, she was a speaker at South by Southwest, discussing wildlife conservation and digital media. In October 2025, she announced the Alveus Research & Recovery Institute, a massive expansion project aiming to breed and release endangered North American species, starting with wolves. She raised over $500,000 in a single day to fund it. In December 2025, she returned as co-host of the Streamer Awards and won the League of Their Own award.

In 2026, Higa's work reached new institutional heights. She was selected in February to collaborate with National Geographic on conservation-focused digital media initiatives. In April, she worked with the World Wildlife Fund for its Give an Hour for Earth campaign and appeared on its Nature Breaking podcast. Later that month, she made history as the first Twitch streamer to deliver a TED Talk at TED2026 in Vancouver. Her talk, titled 'The Wildlife Sanctuary You Can Visit from Anywhere', focused on the role of livestreaming in conservation, and she revealed her total fundraising had surpassed $7.5 million. In July 2026, she was initially announced as a professor for a creator bootcamp but withdrew due to a scheduling conflict with a prior sperm whale conservation commitment.

Podcasts and Personal Ventures

Beyond her primary streaming and sanctuary work, Higa co-hosted two significant podcasts. In November 2021, she began co-hosting the Wine About It podcast with her friend and fellow streamer QTCinderella. The podcast went on hiatus in September 2022 following the controversy and Higa's break from content creation. It returned in March 2023. Higa ultimately left the podcast in July 2025 to focus entirely on her conservation work at Alveus Sanctuary.

In May 2024, she started a second podcast, World's Wildest, with Connor O’Brien, the Director of Operations at Alveus Sanctuary. The podcast was dedicated to highlighting animal species but was ended in October 2025 due to time constraints from the sanctuary's expansion.

Personal Life and Public Identity

Higa moved from California to Austin, Texas, in May 2020, aligning with the founding of Alveus Sanctuary. She lives in a custom-built 390-square-foot tiny house located on the sanctuary grounds, embodying a close connection to her work. She was in a public relationship with fellow Twitch streamer Mizkif from 2019 until September 2021, when the relationship ended.

In August 2026, she announced her engagement to her long-term boyfriend. The following month, during a stream, she came out as bisexual while discussing the importance of representation, sharing this aspect of her personal identity with her audience.