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The island's bush has burned, been logged, and grown back more than once — and it's still being rebuilt today.
Mou Waho was once covered in mature stands of matai and totara — big, slow-growing native hardwoods that had stood for centuries before anyone arrived by boat. That forest is the reason the island has a human history at all: in 1863, Alfred Pinn set up a boat-building operation on Mou Waho specifically because of the timber standing on it, felling matai to build the schooners that once carried goods and passengers up and down the lake.
Monterey pine and Douglas fir aren't native to New Zealand — the first Monterey pines arrived from California in the 1850s, and by the mid-20th century the government was deliberately planting hardy conifers across the high country to stop erosion, with seed even sown from the air in some places. Wind-carried seed from plantings like these is exactly how wilding conifers spread, and Mou Waho was no exception: pines and Douglas fir took hold on the island and, left alone, did what wilding conifers do everywhere — grew fast and crowded out whatever native bush was left.
Milling explains some of what Mou Waho lost, but fire explains more. The island has burned repeatedly over the decades since, each time setting back the native bush's recovery and giving weeds room to move in. By the time DOC and local volunteers turned their attention to the island in earnest, much of the original matai-totara forest was gone, replaced by scrub and open, fire-damaged ground.
What Mou Waho lost to the axe, it lost twice more to fire.
DOC took over managing the Lake Wānaka islands in 1988 and partnered with the local community to start felling the pines and Douglas fir. Animal pests — rats, mice, possums, stoats — were declared fully eradicated by 1995, but the mature, seed-bearing conifers took longer to beat: the last of the wilding pine infestation wasn't fully cleared until the mid-2000s. Even now the job isn't really finished. Pine seed can sit dormant in the ground for years after the parent tree is gone, so DOC and local guides — us included — still pull the odd seedling before it gets the chance to take hold again.
Even the rats were easier to get rid of than the pines.
Getting the felled trees off the island was never really an option — helicoptering tonnes of dead wood out over the lake would have cost more than the removal itself, so most of what came down was simply left where it fell. Walk the tracks today and you'll see what's moved in since: huhu grubs have colonised the rotting logs, and their bore holes are visible right along the trackside if you know where to look.
Since 2007, guided trips to Mou Waho have ended with the same small ritual: planting a native tree, grown locally and chosen to actually thrive on the island. It sounds symbolic, and it is, but it's also just good conservation math — well over 10,000 native seedlings have gone into the ground this way, each one adding food and shelter for the birdlife DOC has worked so hard to bring back.
None of this is finished. A forest doesn't come back on a five-year plan — matai and totara are slow, patient trees, and the ones going into the ground now won't reach real maturity for generations. What you'll see on Mou Waho today is a forest mid-repair: young natives pushing up through open, sunlit ground, with older survivors scattered through it as a reminder of what stood there before the fires and the felling.
Walk through it yourself on our full-day lake tour, which stops on Mou Waho.
