The station buy-ups by NSW National Parks are a waste of money and will further damage Western NSW

Toorale Station had reportedly provided about 10 per centof Bourke's business and 4 per cent of the shire rates.  The National Park now covers 30,800 ha, approximately one third of the property’s former area.  The remaining two-thirds has become the Toorale State Conservation Area.

When Toorale was purchased, the NSW and Australian Governments agreed to "demolish, remove, modify or decommission" water infrastructure to improve water flows for environmental purposes.  They never really got around to doing this because, just as the station's levee banks and other water infrastructure had cost millions (at today's prices) to install, they also would be very expensive to decommission.  The Toorale Water Infrastructure Project is now being undertaken to achieve this.  In 2012, the Commonwealth provided NSW's Office of Environment and Heritage with $4mto "decommission and modify" the levees. It upped its funding to $9m in 2019, after OEH requested more cash.

The recent NSW Government buy-ups of pastoral leases in Western NSW mimic policies under Labor and Bob Carr in the 1990s, when state forests and vacant crown lands (especially near the coast) were converted on an industrial scale into national parks.  Today the total area of the state controlled by the National Parks and Wildlife Service is more than 9 per cent.  While the area of national parks has roughly doubled, the resources deployed to manage them have not, and staffing levels are widely recognised as inadequate for proper management.  Nobody expects the additional parks in Western NSW to be properly staffed.

Prior to the 1990s much of the coastal bushland and forest, now locked up within national parks, was sensibly managed state forest, where fuel loads were kept down by logging, regular thinning, hazard reduction burning, and in some cases livestock grazing.  In the subsequent era, lack of vegetation management has resulted in a greater incidence of bushfires, with mega-fires now happening in a roughly 20 year cycle.

There is a huge gulf in mentality between those who make their living off the land, and the green/conservation lobby, which mostly believes that the environment is best protected largely by leaving nature to cope by itself.  Professional farmers and foresters in contrast strongly believe in active management, particularly of undesirable animals, weeds, and fuel loads.

What is particularly puzzling about the latest spending spree on Western stations is that it was undertaken by a supposedly conservative (Coalition) state government.  Rural media have been scathingin their reaction.  The explanation of the spending spree of course reflects the dominance of the "moderate" faction within the NSW Liberal Party, and the impotence of the National Party.

There may well be repercussions from all this at the next NSW state election, due in March next year.