There are various international conventions that have been set up to facilitate oil spill response and preparedness. There are no conventions specially dedicated to oiled wildlfie response and preparedness. Most of the existing conventions do not explicitly refer to wildlife issues or oiled wildlife response, but do not exclude them either.

European countries are developing a particular interest to integrate oiled wildlife in existing response plans and are keen to ensure that international instruments (e.g. the agreements that facilitate mutual assistance in large incident responses)  also can also be applied to oiled wildlife response. In the last few years several of the European Regional Agreements have developed proposals and amendments to ensure that international tools and facilities can also be used for oiled wildlife incident responses. Oiled wildlife response can be recognised also as part of the implementation of certain conventions. For example the Claims Manual of the IOPC Funds Convention makes particular reference to the possibilities for being compensated for the costs of wildlife response (see the Compensation section for more details.)