How did people change nature? How did nature change people? What were the consequences of human attempts to control nature? Relying on research in the Ottoman state archives as well as newspapers, this paper will attempt to answer these questions by looking at Ottoman land management policies in greater Syria during the 1890s and 1900s. In doing so, the research will follow the pioneering environmental histories of the Middle East from Mikhail, Tabak, and White to bring several crucial yet often understudied actors - both human and nonhuman - into the historical narrative. I will follow three organisms that respectively flew and grew their way into the lives of the region’s peasants, the agricultural laborers caught precariously between land and state. The first creature, the mosquito, acted as a vector for malaria, which particularly afflicted peasants working long hours in marshy lowlands near Adana or Iskenderun. Responses to the mosquito’s impact involved swamp drainage and, later, chemical treatments, each of which had considerable ecological consequences. The second organism, the locust, decimated crops every few decades, contributing to horrific famines. The flying swarms also prompted state attempts at eradication that involved forced conscription of peasants into locust extermination gangs. The third and final organism is the pine tree, a resource whose management also involved considerable state calculation. Deforestation of the Hawran, for example, threatened to erode hills and flood agricultural lowlands. But timber might be used to build railroads that transported troops and grain alike. In sum, the Ottoman state managed public health, agricultural pest control, and forestry in ways that profoundly affected local ecologies. In addition to providing insight about the relationship between people and the land, following these organisms ought to shed light on social relations, namely those between the state and rural residents.