In July 1958, in the same month as the anti-monarchic revolution, Iraqi and Greek researchers presented the government with their socio-economic and planning-architectural study on the ‘Special Problem of Buffalo-Owning Sarifa Dwellers’ in the eastern periphery of Baghdad. The study examined a different kind of urban landscape, rather, an urban ‘wetland’ that was co-created by migrant families engaged in buffalo-breeding from southeastern Iraq, including the marshes. Contemporary discourse on Iraq’s wetland ecosystems has thus far been dominated by a focus on the marshes of southeastern Iraq. This paper, however, wants to broaden the historical notion of what constituted a ‘wetland’ in Iraq. It examines the ‘wetland’ ecosystems of Mayzara, a neighborhood located beyond the eastern Nazim Pasha flood dyke and railway embankment. The capital’s inhabitants greatly benefited from their dairy production, specifically dairy-based products like the popular breakfast food qeymar. On average, the monthly income of buffalo-owning migrant families was five times the amount that a non-buffalo owning family earned. The Iraqi river buffalo was a highly desirable commodity whose sale could both enable a family to migrate to the city or whose breeding could render them wealthy in the capital. Yet, the study argued that in order for these families to become “productive social units,” their housing situation should be categorized and solved as either part of the rural or urban territories of Iraq. Yet their distinct settlements, marked by large open courtyards, earth architecture, reed mat shelters and nearby wading pools for buffaloes did not fit into the flattened categories of rural and urban. Instead, migrant families used flood plains, water channels, and excavated ditches to reproduce the environmental features of the wetlands they left behind to support their buffalo-centered livelihoods in the capital. Buffaloes and Chevrolets, along with reed mats and concrete, thus equally defined Baghdad’s environment. Similar to how the Iraqi state viewed southeastern marshlands as a problem of development, the capital’s authorities and state officials perceived buffalo-breeding families, the Iraqi river buffaloes, and their urban ‘wetlands’ as a problem that required drastic environmental intervention and transformation. This paper narrates how Iraqi, British, and Greek experts conceptualized this problem and eventually drained this landscape.