The length of Picnic Point is shrinking.

According to Campus Natural Areas manager Cathie Bruner, Picnic Point’s shoreline is gradually eroding.

“We can see there is less shoreline,” Bruner said.

She said various factors are contributing to the shoreline’s erosion, including human traffic and a rising lake level, possibly due to climate change and definitely due to the increased water channeled into Lake Mendota from urban sprawl.

Another factor involved is Picnic Point’s invasion by non-native plants, she said. The non-native plants choke out the ground shrubs that once provided a strong root system below the surface to hold the soil in place.

Bruner said Picnic Point used to be part of a farm and held cows that grazed on the point.

“Since the grazing stopped, non-native shrubs have spread badly and don’t allow ground shrubs to grow under the shade from trees,” Bruner said.

People have also accelerated the erosion, she said, from tramping down to the water.

However, she said her department would try to facilitate a way for people to get down to the lake without disrupting the soil.

“People always want to go down to the water, and we’ll make a way for them to do that,” Bruner said.

She said the Department of Natural Resources is planning a grant to help control the erosion by replacing the lost native plants and finding ways to weave in a strong root system beneath the shore.

Bruner said she would hold a public session sometime in the next year to encourage volunteers to help restore Picnic Point’s stability. Volunteers will import walking-path material that will buffer the land rather than erode.

“Right now the place looks so abused, worn and bare, because people have been using it for so long,” Bruner said. “But Picnic Point is a very old geological formation, and the rock layers will probably be there a very long time.”