Locals say the district - already savaged by years of drought and environmental cuts to irrigation water allocations - should not be forced to suffer further social and economic stress by turning Toorale into a national park.

Although they accept that the station's irrigation entitlements must go to help the parched Murray-Darling Basin, they want the State Government to sell or lease the land so it can keep running livestock.

Others want Toorale to be a pioneer for a new form of land management in NSW and operate as a hybrid grazing property and nature reserve that tourists could visit.

Only 2000 hectares of the 91,000-hectare property are developed for growing irrigated crops such as cotton. The rest is used to run sheep and cattle.

Toorale is carrying nearly 10pc of the district's livestock and spends large amounts on things such as trucking and shearing.

It also pays $46,000 a year in council rates; the parks service does not pay rates.

The state and federal governments bought Toorale for nearly $24 million last week to return about 20 gigalitres of water a year to the environment.

The State Government said Toorale, at the junction of the Darling and Warrego rivers, would also become part of the reserve system because it was an "ecologically and culturally important landscape".

The National Parks Association and the National Trust agree Toorale should become a nature reserve because it has poorly conserved vegetation, Aboriginal sites and a shearing shed where Henry Lawson once worked.

Trevor Randall, whose family owns Bourke's newsagency and electrical goods store, said turning Toorale into a national park would reduce the money flowing into the Bourke economy and "we can't afford to lose anything more".

"We have gone from three supermarkets to one," Mr Randall said.

"The town's just collapsed. I'm petrified about the future of the place."

David Boyd sits on the board of Clyde Agriculture, which sold Toorale.

He said it was a "very fine grazing property" and the State Government should look at combining grazing and eco-tourism there: "You can have good environmental outcomes and good commercial outcomes."

The Nationals MP for Barwon, Kevin Humphries, said land was successfully managed for agriculture and the environment in other countries and the State Government could achieve the same at Toorale.

"We need to have [Toorale] as a working pastoral operation," Mr Humphries said.

"The endangered species now are our communities. Inland Australia is failing."