Artist impression of the Mt Messenger bypass project s southern tunnel entrance.
Photo: Supplied
The $200 million project is inching closer to a start date after a High Court appeal against re-routing the highway through the Mangapēpeke Valley was lost earlier in December.
Forest and Bird chief executive Kevin Hague said he was not a party to this appeal, but had opposed the bypass from the beginning. We are sad about the outcome but the outcome does seem to be settled now. We don t think we can change it, Hague said. For us, it is another example of nature once again giving way to kind of human endeavour and we ve just lost so much we actually can t afford to keep sacrificing nature for human convenience, which is exactly what the bypass is about.