This paper presents new research on the environmental history of early Protectorate-era Morocco and explores more generally how environmental research can provide opportunities to rethink the social, cultural, and political histories of the period. Between 1912 and 1940, French reformers sought to “civilize” the landscape of rural Morocco by privatizing communal and shared-use rangeland and forests for sale to European settlers, wealthy indigenous landowners and international agribusiness, forestry and mining corporations. Reformers were self-consciously intent on repurposing, “disciplining” or destroying many features of the rural environment in hopes of creating new ecologies conducive to increased capital flows, intensive monocrop agriculture and a profitable export market. The ecological disequilibrium and social fracture caused by these and other modernization projects contributed to the economic collapse of the agricultural sector in the 1930s, while the long-term consequences (primarily desertification and sinking water tables) continue to affect Morocco today. Beyond helping to understand the long-term consequences of changes to the Moroccan biosphere, this paper presents new ways of conceptualizing the colonial priorities that led to such widespread changes to the environment.