Hi WILDLABS community! I am a Research Advocate at Earth Species Project and wanted to share an update on our latest work :)

We just released alp-data, an open-source pip-installable Python package that gives unified access to 35+ bioacoustic datasets (birds, marine mammals, primates, insects, anurans, and multi-taxon benchmarks) through a single interface. The package is built on the data tools we use internally at ESP to train and evaluate our models. We’ve open-sourced it so that the wider field can work from the same foundation.

The problem: Bioacoustic data lives across many repositories and libraries. BirdSet uses one schema, Xeno-canto another, Watkins yet another. Each comes with its own sampling rates, file structures, metadata conventions, and licensing terms. There’s a huge engineering tax to make these datasets work together.

The solution: alp-data replaces all of that data engineering with one consistent interface: every dataset returns audio and sample_rate keys, supports streaming for large corpora, and can be filtered, combined, or reconfigured through YAML.

Importantly, ESP compiled and unified these datasets. We don’t own them, and each retains its original license (mostly CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, CC0, or public domain).

We’re also introducing the ALP Explorer, which allows you to geographically interact with and preview a curated subset of data, which is a fun entry point into alp-data. 

Get started and learn more here: 

• Install: pip install alp-data
• Docs and background: projects.earthspecies.org/alp-data
• Seven tutorial notebooks to help you get started: https://projects.earthspecies.org/alp-data/latest/tutorials/01_basics/ 
• ALP Data Explorer: https://alp-explorer.esp.dev/ 
• Blog post: https://earthspecies.org/2026/07/22/introducing-alp-data-a-shared-data-layer-for-animal-language-processing/ 

If you have any questions, feedback, or feature requests - join technical discussions on ESP’s Discourse!