Everyone steps aside for symbol of the Games

By PETER CALDER

It's no surprise that a tiny, shy amphibian the length of your thumb is the environmental icon of the Games. Just look at its colour.

Litoria aurea is its scientific name - it means golden beach dweller, which is a misnomer since it likes freshwater wetlands.

But the common name tells the full story. Meet the green and golden bell frog which, apart from a careless blemish of turquoise in its groin, had the good sense to dress in the sporting colours of its native land.

It's about 8cm long at full swimming stretch or 5cm when resting under a rock, which it seems to spend a lot of time doing. But it stopped the huge excavators preparing Olympic Park for the Games and forced the relocation of a tennis centre.

Environmental scientist Kerry Darcovich, manager of ecological studies for the Olympic Coordination Authority which oversaw the seven years of preparation for the Games, said frogs were found in the Brickpit, a 16ha disused quarry in the wasteland that became the Olympic site.

The Brickpit, the former headquarters of the NSW State Brickworks, was to be the site of the Olympic Tennis Centre. But the frog stopped that.

Instead, contractors spent $A650,000 ($820,000) extending its habitat, creating 29 ponds, moving in more boulders and fencing it in so it wouldn't be trampled by the millions of feet that will pound along Olympic Boulevard this week and next.

The frog, an east coast native, was once common, but Mr Darcovich says it is now found in only 50 locations. The 1500 or so at Homebush Bay make up one of the largest populations.

"It is one of the most ambitious programmes ever undertaken for an endangered species."

Sydney has gone to extraordinary lengths to make these the most ecologically sound Games.

Buildings, including grandstands, are "passively air-conditioned" using the principles of fluid dynamics, water for flushing the 2500 toilets and 2km of urinals in Olympic Park is collected and recycled, and the athletes' village, which will become the suburb of Newington, is the world's largest solar-powered residential development.