While millions visit the awe-inspiring natural treasures of Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe, exposing people to nature in their own neighborhoods may be the best strategy for preserving biodiversity, says a UC Davis law professor.

Holly Doremus says fostering a love of nature is necessary to create the political will for a "revolutionary" system of legal protections for the environment.

In a law review article titled "Biodiversity and the Challenge of Saving the Ordinary," the professor says the focus of law and conservationists on special things and places -- charismatic species and spectacular locations -- is not effective in protecting the entire tapestry of diverse living things.

Instead, Doremus argues for nurturing a love of nature as a way to cultivate support for legal protections. As the most important strategy for achieving this, she recommends maintaining and restoring areas in and around major population centers to offer easy and frequent access to nature.

"People who see the nature around them as a special gift, as something that adds value to their daily lives, will make some sacrifices and accept some limitations to keep it around," Doremus writes.

Many of the actions that threaten biodiversity are local and many of the decisions about protections are made at the local level, the professor says. "If those decisions are to protect biodiversity, concern for nature must be planted and nurtured, not just in a few places, but across the country."

Doremus says the system of law needed to protect biodiversity is evolutionary in its parts but revolutionary as a whole: a patchwork of new and existing federal, state and local laws. Together the laws should focus not on protecting the special, she says, but on limiting the many human activities that threaten biodiversity.

The article is forthcoming in the Idaho Law Review.