Residents living near Sir Sandford Fleming park are circulating a petition online, requesting HRM purchase a piece of land in order to protect the loop trail in the park

Residents living near Sir Sandford Fleming Park are circulating a petition online, requesting HRM purchase a piece of land in order to protect the loop trail in the park.

Although the municipality does own the majority of the park, a section of the popular loop trail is privately owned.

Many hikers and residents in the area were surprised to hear recently that part of the trail is owned privately and that the owner recently put the property up for sale.

Councillor for Halifax West/Armdale Shawn Cleary said that he only found out last year that the piece of property was not owned by HRM, and has been working to come up with a plan to either gets rights to it or to buy that piece of land outright.

Member of the Nova Scotia Nature Trust and resident of reserve road, Judy Robinson told NEWS 95.7 that she wishes she had known that the property owners were looking to sell this piece of property last year.

"If the neighbourhood had known, maybe we could have done some kind of funding," suggested Robinson.

The section of land in question is part of a wider property which has been listed for sale by the owner for $990,000.

Currently the property remains in private ownership, and zoned as residential making the location potentially open to development.

"It would be very sad," said Robinson. "Once it's gone, it's gone, and it completely takes away from the greater good of what the park is."