Four months after a court victory over environmentalists, state highway officials are pushing ahead with their plans to start work this summer on the first segment of the long-planned Interstate 69 extension between Evansville and Indianapolis.

State contractors began clearing trees and homes last month from a nearly 2-mile-long stretch in Gibson County to prepare for construction of the first piece of the 142-mile highway.

Andy Dietrick, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation, said Tuesday that two homes and two outbuildings had been razed and about 100 trees felled in that tract.

He said INDOT faced an April 15 deadline to clear the plot’s trees because removing them any later would have risked harming the federally endangered Indiana bat, a thumb-sized animal that emerges from caves in the spring to roost and reproduce in trees over the summer.

“If the bats had come out of their caves and roosted in those trees with their young then we wouldn’t have been able to remove those trees. But we met that deadline,” Dietrick said.

With site clearance proceeding, he said the state plans to open bidding Wednesday on a contract to build a 1.77-mile section of the highway from Interstate 64 to State Road 68.

That small stretch is part of the highway’s 13-mile Section 1 that will run to Oakland City and be the first segment built.

Dietrick said construction is set to start in midsummer on those initial 1.77 miles. He said Section 1 is the only part of the six-section highway that’s so far received final approval from the Federal Highway Administration.

Environmentalists oppose the highway, which will cost between $1.73 billion and $1.83 billion, because it will cut across wetlands, woodlands, sensitive cave ecosystems and farmland.

On Dec. 10, a federal judge ruled against environmental groups who had sued to try to block the highway. Dietrick said that ruling cleared the way for INDOT to start work on the first part of the highway across rural southwestern Indiana, which is now served mainly by two-lane roads.

As work proceeds on the highway’s short first portion, law enforcement are keeping close watch on the bulldozers, trucks and other equipment being used at the Gibson County site.

Dietrick said INDOT is concerned about veiled threats to the project, including an Internet posting purportedly from the radical environmental group Earth First! that states: “We will never let them build this road.”

Gibson County Sheriff Allen Harmon said his deputies began conducting extra patrols after INDOT and contractor Bernardin Lochmueller & Associates passed on word of the possible threats.

So far, he said, there’s been no trouble and no arrests.

“I’m hoping that we can keep it to where everyone can voice their opinion in a peaceful manner,” Harmon said.

One longtime I-69 opponent, however, said he may file a complaint with Indiana State Police over the treatment he said he received during a March 10 visit to Gibson County to photograph the contractor’s work preparing homes for demolition.

Thomas Tokarski, a member of Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads, said he just wanted to collect photo evidence because he wants the public to know that the entire highway will require demolition of about 400 homes.

He said he was standing on a road near I-64 when a trooper stopped and asked him what he was doing. Tokarski said he was questioned inside the trooper’s squad car and the trooper then searched his car.

“I was just taking pictures, pictures they don’t want us to take because they don’t want people to see the real damage that’s happening because of I-69,” he said.

State Police spokesman Sgt. Todd Ringle said Tokarski agreed to enter the trooper’s squad car for questioning and also consented to allowing his car to be searched.

“He was told he was not doing anything wrong. He agreed to get into the car and they talked for a while and then Mr. Tokarski got out of the car and left. At no point was he handcuffed or ordered inside the car,” Ringle said.

The state currently has about $700 million set aside for the highway. Dietrick said that should be enough to build the highway from Evansville to the Crane Naval Warfare Center about 25 miles southwest of Bloomington.