It is time to draw a line in the sand. Like some ineradicable tree-weed, the Haast-Hollyford road proposal refuses to die.
Resurfacing approximately twice a decade, the project has been beaten back in the past by government economics or the sheer logistics of pushing a tourist highway through wilderness that typically receives thousands of millimetres of rain each year.
However, without strong opposition, it may be only a matter of time.
First surfacing in the 1870s, the Haast-Hollyford proposal travelled its furthest in 1973, when two bulldozers financed by North American mining companies drove through temperate rainforest along the coast as far south as the Pyke catchment, hoping to create a route into the Red Hills for asbestos mining.
The bottom dropped out of the international asbestos market so that the road was abandoned, its traces south of Barn Bay largely swallowed up by jungle.
Land and coast that the route crossed, which now has World Heritage status, is part of the Olivine wilderness.
At the time of writing, National MPs Eric Roy and Chris Auchinvole have yet again reanimated the proposal for discussion among Southland and West Coast mayors, naively supposing there is broad support for it from the community at large, little opposition from environmentalists and net positives for greater New Zealand.
Ludicrously, there have even been claims the road would prove climate-friendly by shortening the distance between prospective tourism destinations.
Last year, responding to a privately commissioned report by OCTA Associates, the Ministries of Economic Development and Tourism evaluated the economic merits of the proposal, concluding that significant public support was needed before the Government would seriously consider investing the estimated $NZ300 million required to create the route.
The Olivine wilderness at present unfolds uninterrupted to the sea.
The ruggedness of the coastal landscape would necessitate dramatic large-scale alteration of forested bluffs or annihilation of the boulder and beach coastline which constitutes a passage of only moderate difficulty to any competent tramping party.
A highway would also conduct pest species from didymo to mustelids into a natural environment of international importance.
There can be no question that we are quite capable of linking up Milford with the West Coast.
The engineering feat of building a highway through Arthurs Pass is proof enough of that.
But why on earth would we want to? The presumption that the New Zealand tourism experience can be upsized like any happy meal deal by connecting the West Coast to Milford and cutting out Queenstown is naive in the extreme.
People do not come to New Zealand to see more roads and car parks.
They come to see natural landscapes that have traditionally proved frontiers to the technological presumptions of mankind.
We are fools to suppose that a road through virgin lowland wilderness, the country of Arawhata Bill and Charlie Douglas, can feasibly constitute a healthy ecofriendly tourism prospect.
The Haast-Hollyford road's equally ugly sister, the Collingwood-Karamea road proposal in North Westland, likewise shows a stunning lack of vision.
As one of 11 formally designated wilderness areas, the signal importance of the Olivine wilderness area is represented by section 20 of the Conservation Act 1987.
Section 20(1)(e) expressly states that no roads, tracks, or trails shall be constructed on it.
Author Les Molloy has described the lowland coastal wilderness adjacent to the Olivine mountains as de facto wilderness, and indeed it is hard to see how any highway can adopt a route that avoids triggering the statute as it moves either into Big Bay or the Pyke catchment.
To build their road, proponents will require not just the support of mayors but also an Act of Parliament.
Assuming National managed both to amend or repeal section 20 and modify the extant conservation strategy, the proposal would still need to be notified.
In that event, strong, organised opposition from environmental groups at every level, politically, in court and on site, will be a certainty.
Whether they succeed or not, the roadies will face a difficult, arduous and expensive journey.
Opponents of the road have been accused of elitism for advocating that only those with sufficient fitness to walk the route should be allowed to enter this part of the country.
That position goes with the territory, literally.
If any compromises must be made in the name of this short-sighted argument, they ought to be minor, perhaps the provision of wire bridges over the Cascade, Spoon, Gorge and Callery Rivers for parties with less river experience to travel the rugged coast from Barn Bay to Big Bay.
Even a cycle route would significantly interfere with the coastline's unique qualities.
At present, the route, though its scenic virtues are very different, is about as difficult as the Dusky track.
If we put a road through to the Hollyford road-end, we will be doing irreversible injury to the landscape integrity of our single greatest natural asset, Te Wai Pounamu.
By allowing a stretch of globally significant wilderness to be penetrated by motorhomes, we would be unambiguously confirming a well-known suspicion among international tourists that New Zealand is a nation of ecocidal boors and remnant scenery.
• Richard Reeve is a Warrington poet. With Mick Abbott, he recently co-edited the essay-anthology Wild Heart: On the Possibility of Wilderness in Aotearoa New Zealand.
