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Every ecosystem, whether natural or man-made, has a natural tendency to increase its organisational level inducing a maximal utilisation of its resources and consequently, minimising the net output from the system. In order to obtain useful net output from an ecosystem, therefore, it is necessary to stop and to stabilise the evolution at an intermediate organisational level by proper control. “Ecological” life support systems for manned space missions will be required to maximise productivity and safety whilst at the same time respecting tight size constraints, which implies powerful control and regulation systems. However the behaviour of complex ecosystems is relatively poorly understood, their stability/evolution is greatly influenced by intrinsic internal controls and classical control theories cannot be easily applied.