National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages have initiated the Enduring Voices Project to introduce to a broad audience the geography of global language diversity and the language extinction crisis that humanity now faces. The project explores connections between the global distribution of languages and patterns of biodiversity, and the ways in which these systems mutually shape each other.

Participants from the fields of geography, linguistics, conservation biology, bioinformatics and genetics met at the National Geographic Society to develop ways of involving indigenous communities in five global hotspots (including the American southwest) in a global effort to save their own languages.

Blackstone Ranch Institute co-sponsored the gathering along with the Christensen Fund.