Held at the University of California, Berkeley, the conference brought together internationally recognized researchers and practitioners in the social, natural, linguistics, and behavioral sciences, as well as Indigenous thinkers and activists, to discuss the “converging extinction crisis” of the biocultural diversity of life.

Within two years of being founded, Terralingua began to receive invitations to collaborate with major environmental and cultural organizations including World Wildlife Fund, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and other international, academic and research-based institutions, and museums.

Through its global network, it provides information, documentation, and expertise to individuals and grassroots organizations seeking to maintain their linguistic and cultural heritage, restore the health of their environments, and uphold their human rights.

Recent Terralingua activities include developing a broad-ranging educational campaign on Biocultural Diversity to reach academics, professionals, policy makers, schools, and the general public.

In 2008, Terry Glavin, Canadian author and journalist, and winner of several science-related journalism awards wrote an article, "In Defense of Difference", where he referred to Luisa Maffi, Terralingua Director, as a leader who paved the way for “biocultural diversity” to start "...showing up with increasing frequency in the lexicon of a wide variety of scientists and academics concerned with the phenomenon of extinction."

Writes Glavin, "That we are beginning to understand the intricacies of these relationships is due in no small measure to the work of Italian-born anthropologist and linguist Luisa Maffi."