of such projects these days, as the notion of large-scale oecology as gradually seeped into the consciousness of scientists in the late Seventies and early Eighties, leading to the founding of the Long Term Ecological Research Network in the USA in 1980, and the later creation of a global organisation, the International Long Term Ecological Research Network some three years later.

http://www.lternet.edu/

http://www.ilternet.edu/

One supposes that eventually the awareness that every "local" problem ultimately affects the whole world may trickle into the popular consciousness, but there are still many pockets of those who refuse to believe that the Dust Bowl destruction of the agriculture of an entire region in the 1930's was caused by small human decisions about what was "important" and what was not, writ large on an oecological stage.

Those little dormice are important, and it's quite likely we don't fully know why, even now.

Cheers,

Puddin'