Mind the Outdoors.
“The concept of Immersion Earth was not to simply display animals for the public, but to engage them in a shared experience of being in nature with birds of prey.”
Our Mission
“To accomplish this mission, our programs are operated through a satellite location, the Reserve, in wild Florida. This unique parcel of native Florida habitat is both accessible and remote, allowing our team to host a wide variety of educational programming and workshops. These include impressive demonstrations of raptor behavior in our free flight arena, guided walks with Florida naturalists, and one-on-one encounters with our avian ambassadors.
Our organization provides an integrative platform from which to expand research in the areas of multi-species relationships, holistic healing practices, and natural recovery. As apex predators, raptors do not fit into current models and/or public conceptualizations about how animal-assisted interventions work, primarily due to methodological approaches that do not align with the essence of what animals are: products of the natural world. Immersion Earth aims to develop novel approaches of health and healing by facilitating connections between humans, raptors, and the wild.
MEET THE TEAM
Kaleigh Hoyt
Kaleigh Hoyt is an avid raptor enthusiast whose work aims to bridge holistic health models and connections to the natural world with birds of prey. After spending nearly six years training raptors and developing ecotherapeutic programming, Kaleigh believes that working with raptors provide a unique opportunity to facilitate positive engagement with the environment, our mental/physical health, and community. Kaleigh has supported her passion of sharing this work through the co-creation of Avian Veteran Alliance, a recreational therapy program that pairs inpatient veterans from Bay Pines VA Hospital with permanently injured birds of prey. This pilot program served as inspiration for a recently completed MA degree in Applied Anthropology, in which Kaleigh explored various aspects of raptor-human relationship building that sets them apart from other service animals. Kaleigh has since expanded her research to the PhD level to further explore what makes raptors so fascinating to work with!
Click here to view Kaleigh’s thesis on RAPTORS and HUMANS- Exploring Alternative Therapies in Non-Clinical Environments using Birds of Prey
“I am extremely fortunate to have spent the last year and a half at the University of South Florida exploring the ways in which raptors and humans interact, and what this might tell us about the feasibility of working with birds of prey to improve well-being. As part of a two-stage master’s project in Neuroanthropology, I have critically evaluated both the ways in which formalized programs help to facilitate these relationships, as well as what the process of interacting with raptors actually looks like.
I am extremely committed to understanding how raptor-human relationships are developed, as well as how people come to acquire knowledge about raptors, conservation, and the environment at large. To better answer these questions, I am currently enrolled in the PhD program in the Department of Applied Anthropology at USF where I will be studying various anthropologies of conservation. “