Toorale Station purchase good news for the Darling and Warrego rivers - 11 September 2008

Greens MP Ian Cohen congratulates the NSW and Federal Governments on
their purchase of Toorale Station near Bourke.

“The Government wants to turn this property into a national park –
which I applaud - but they have an additional and unique opportunity to
use part of this land to create a centre for research into dry land crop
cultivation,” said Mr Cohen.

“This will be increasingly necessary as we try to adapt to the
affects of climate change on our agricultural systems.

“The construction of a research and training centre at Toorale would
also have the benefit of creating jobs to assist members of the
community adversely affected by the transition from cotton farming and
grazing.

“This could be a sustainable environmental development that benefits
the land, farmers downstream, dying wetlands and local employment around
Bourke.

“Parts of Toorale Station are laser levelled old irrigation areas
which are not necessarily ideal for national park, but they could be
excellent for climate research.

“91,000 hectares is a lot of land. There is enough space for the new
national park, preservation of historic buildings and for research into
the kind of agriculture that our food bowl will need to deploy in order
to cope with climate change impacts

“Although there are serious water shortages in the system, this
purchase demonstrates that how water is allocated is more important than
the amount of water available overall,” said Mr Cohen.

“With unique world class ecosystems struggling to survive through
drought conditions, a 20 billion litre ecological flush into a parched
system is a major positive action.

“This move also sets a worthy precedent for more land to be bought in
the future as government buys back land for environmental flows,”
concluded Mr Cohen.