A CHARITY doing big things to support the people, landscape and wildlife of the Yorkshire Dales has extended its conservation work to include a service area on the A19 in North Yorkshire.

Now in its second year, the partnership between the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust and Exelby Services has seen 850 trees planted by 170 young people who have learned new skills whilst helping to connect with nature.

Exelby Services are a family owned, independent distributor of bunkering and retails fuels across the North of England. Comprising of five service areas and truck stops, they handle more than 140 million litres of fuel a year and provide overnight parking for up to 350 HGVs per day.

Rob Exelby, managing director of Exelby Services, said: “We’ve taken inspiration from our partnership with YDMT to plant more than a hundred trees and hundreds more shrubs and bushes to create a diverse habitat for the local wildlife.

“We’re looking to supplement this with an on-site solar farm to make it our first carbon negative service area.”

Michael Devlin, deputy CEO at YDMT, added: “Through our ‘Together for Trees’ campaign we are working with many supporters and partners such as Exelby Services to plant 100,000 additional trees across the region.

“Trees are hugely valuable as a habitat for wildlife supporting some of our most endangered woodland animals, like red squirrels, dormice and cuckoos.”