Local people of a community interact with nature in a way that is mediated by their local cultures and shape their own environment. We need a local approach to conservation for the local environment adding to the political or technological approaches for global environmental problems such as the destruction of the ozone layer or global warming. The local approach to conservation is based on the paradigm of "life-environmentalism" found in the discussion of Japanese environmental sociology. Life-environmentalism focuses on the lives of local residents to analyse regional environmental problems and pay attention to their local cultures. In this paper, I will examine whether Japanese outdoor education can contribute to the local approach of conservation and I will present a test case of community-based outdoor education based on life-environmentalism.