Birmingham’s Church of the Highlands has recently blocked off a popular hiking trail on Grants Mill Road in Irondale with the erection of a 6 ft. tall chain link fence on their property.

Birmingham hikers and nature enthusiasts have taken to social media in droves to express their anger over loss of access to the trail. Over 500 people have reacted to a Reddit post featured on the r/Birmingham page which shows screenshots of a now deleted Facebook post complaining about the blockage with photos of the fence.

Ginny Brown, author of the original Facebook post, said she made the decision to remove the post due to commentors losing focus on what she said was really important, the trail.

“I voluntarily removed the post,” said Brown. “There were over 200 comments, and I couldn’t keep up with them but some of them were going way off of this subject.”

“I’ve volunteered probably hundreds of hours on that trail since 2017 or 2018 and I have pretty much been all over that property helping to maintain it.