Agenda outlines the future of Lakeshore Nature Preserve

An integrated plan for protecting the future of scenic lakeside natural areas that help define UW–Madison will be detailed in a public presentation on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. in the main lounge of Chadbourne Residential College.

The Lakeshore Nature Preserve Master Plan, more than 18 months in the making, focuses on the management and stewardship of more than 300 acres along nearly two miles of shoreline where Lake Mendota meets the campus.

It includes such well-known and iconic areas as the Lakeshore Path, Picnic Point, Muir Woods, the Class of 1918 Marsh, the Eagle Heights Community Gardens and the Eagle Heights Woods.

“Our goal is to manage these precious lands to protect their distinctive natural features and to increase the enjoyment and understanding of visitors,” says William Cronon, chair of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Committee. “The Lakeshore Nature Preserve can serve as a national model for how cities and universities can protect and sustain the natural areas within their boundaries.”

Cronon says the plan is key to managing the preserve – which evolved over many decades through the addition of undeveloped parcels of land – as a single unit and targeting needed improvements. The preserve’s master plan was developed in tandem with the general campus master plan, which emphasizes open space as a defining element of the campus.

“The university is committing itself to a master plan that will provide much better care for the preserve,” Cronon says.

Alan Fish, associate vice chancellor for facilities, says the plan creates an agenda for preservation and environmental management that will ensure future generations are able to enjoy the preserve.

“It dovetails seamlessly with the campus master plan, which celebrates our spectacular setting and continues an environmental ethic that dates to our early ties with Aldo Leopold and John Muir,” Fish says. “The plan for the preserve demonstrates our commitment to protecting environmentally sensitive areas.”

Among the plan’s recommendations are:

• Identifying gateways to the preserve at the eastern end of the Lakeshore Path, the parking lot at Frautschi Point and especially at the base of Picnic Point to help orient and welcome visitors.
• Transforming an area at the tip of Picnic Point that has become densely overgrown by invasive species such as buckthorn, honeysuckle and other exotic shrubs. To view Madison’s skyline, visitors must now scramble down steep slopes marked by tree roots, vegetation and eroded soils. The plan calls for clearing invasive shrubs to restore the view, constructing rustic stone steps to the lake’s edge and providing a stone story-telling circle.
• Managing the preserve’s vegetation with the goal of restoring native habitats, such as an oak savanna, prairie areas and oak forests.
• Reintroducing controlled burning, which was part of the area’s ecosystem for thousands of years, to eliminate invasive species and give students hands-on experience with fire management. The technique will help in the restoration of native habitats. Additionally, the plan calls for restoring key views by selectively removing vegetation that has choked traditional viewing spots.
• Providing clearly marked and easily accessible trails that will enable hikers to trek from the Memorial Union Terrace to Shorewood Hills.
• Improving the interpretation of important cultural landmarks in the preserve, such as effigy mounds, village sites and old shoreline camps. These include Native American sites and remnants of 19th century farmsteads.

The plan also urges an intergovernmental effort to tackle the problem of soil runoff and sedimentation in University Bay, near Willow Creek. Because the creek’s watershed involves an area reaching to the Hilldale Shopping Center and beyond, it urges the university work with state and local officials to control the problem.

Cronon says that plans also call for the development of new maps, signs educational literature and a new website to boost public awareness of the preserve.

“The preserve symbolizes not just the beauty of UW–Madison, but its core values as one of the preeminent environmental research universities in the world,” says Cronon, a professor of history, geography and environmental studies. “The new master plan lays out an exciting agenda – a greenprint, as it were – for putting the university’s environmental knowledge and values to work in our own back yard.”