Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this section is from Eco Logical Australia 2016. Green and Golden Bell Frog Plan of Management - Arncliffe. Prepared for NSW Roads and Maritime Service (the RMS plan).
WestConnex is a NSW government road building project involving the construction and duplication of multiple roads. One component is the New M5 which is going to go through Arncliffe via a tunnel. But a lot of construction activity is taking place on the surface. This construction activity is impacting on the Arncliffe GGBF. I took the photo below on February 5, 2017, from Marsh Street. It shows the GGBF habitat, with the construction site to the left.
Let's look at the WestConnex diagram again.
In the above diagram, the green dots are the RTA ponds, the yellow dots are additional bodies of water in which the GGBF has been found to breed, the red dashed line is a frog tunnel to more potential habitat which the frogs are not using.
The blue shaded area are permanent WestConnex facilities and the brown shaded areas is the construction site for WestConnex. Construction is planned to be complete by late 2019 (source: WestConnex - New M5 - Arncliffe - Factsheet). The green shaded area are the parts of the golf course that are still in use, according to the RMS plan.
The RMS plan acknowledges that construction eliminates one occasional breeding site and 7.82 hectares of habitat. It is also evident from the diagram that the distance that the frogs would have to travel between the RTA ponds and the remaining occasional breeding sites would increase.
As the WestConnex work is impacting on the frog habitat, the GGBF RMS plan prescribes a Habitat Extension