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Most analyses of international wildlife law (IWL) focus on the specifics of implementing particular policies, while there is less engagement with the fundamental philosophies underpinning international conventions. In this article, I argue that a philosophical analysis can achieve a deeper understanding of IWL by helping to identify, assess and compare worldviews reflected in these instruments. Additionally, a philosophical analysis can make visible how international wildlife conventions shape human perceptions of and attitudes towards nature. Based on these premises, I subject two international wildlife conventions that are central to wildlife management in Europe, namely, the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to philosophical scrutiny. I argue, first, that the philosophical underpinnings of these instruments are in contention, indicating that their policies might well counteract each other. Second, I postulate that the broad significance of this contention is that the resulting ambivalence when IWL instruments are involved in the same conversation and about the same territoriality results in such high discretional powers for states that they stop being bounded by the conventions’ substratum and can limit themselves to only following the formalities.
