Birmingham’s Church of the Highlands has removed a 6-foot-tall chain link fence from where it was previously blocking a popular hiking trail on Grants Mill Road in Irondale.
But one trail visitor says the fence has merely been relocated. While it no longer blocks the trail, outdoor enthusiast Ginny Brown says a new fence still affects visitors and wildlife.
The church removed the trail-blocking fence earlier this month after they were able to come to an “amicable” resolution with local nonprofit the Fresh Water Land Trust, said the trust’s Executive Director Rusha Smith.
Part of the trail that was blocked by the fencing ran across land owned by the nonprofit, and Smith told the Lede last month that Fresh Water Land Trust would be working with Church of the Highlands to find a solution.
“I am confident that we will be able to come up, in short order, with some kind of resolution that will be satisfactory to everyone involved. Including Freshwater Land Trust, the Church of the Highlands, and trail users,” Smith previously told the Lede.
While hikers have been granted access to the trail again, Brown, who has helped maintain the trail for the last six years, says the fence’s new location, which runs parallel to the trail from about 50 ft. away according to her, remains an eyesore.
“They left the section that was on the mountainside that ran vertically up to their new building and made a right angle on it and ran it parallel to the trail,” said Brown, “They ran it quite some distance [roughly a quarter of a mile, Brown said] and then it stops abruptly at a retention pond.”
“This fall, when the leaves are off, it’s going to look awful. And that’s going to be their [Church of the Highland’s] monument.”
Despite some lasting impacts to the trail, people were eager to return over the last couple of weeks, especially for the Memorial holiday weekend, Brown said.
“People are back on the trail, of course there’s a bit of a mess there where their ATVs came and churned up the trail,” she said. “Hopefully it will heal itself… But it’s a better situation.”
When Brown first took to Facebook to post about the original fence, Birmingham hikers and nature enthusiasts expressed anger over loss of access to the trail. Hundreds of people reacted to a Reddit post featured on the r/Birmingham page which showed a screenshots of Brown’s now deleted Facebook post complaining about the blockage with photos of the fence.
Brown said she made the decision to remove the post due to commenters losing focus on what she said was really important, the trail.
While two-legged forest visitors have benefitted from the fence’s relocation, Brown said woodland animals will still have to figure out a new way to navigate the area.
“So, the wildlife are still trapped in there,” she said. “I guess they’ll figure out a way to go all the way around it and come out at the retention pond.”
This reconfiguration in travel patterns could have drastic impacts on the local wildlife according to local environmental scientist Janna Owens.
“…You have animals that you think can get over that but what about rabbits?” Owens said previously. “Or what about if you have owls and so forth that live off a certain diet, but that animal tends to live on the other side of the fence? But then the food that that animal eats they can’t get to because, oops, it’s on the other side of the fence from where they are.
“It causes a schism, I guess you could say.”
Representatives for Church of the Highlands did not respond to requests for comment.
Ad Choices