Tarmac celebrate successful partnership with YDMT
Company and Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust mark five years of collaboration as part of ‘People and the Planet’ initiative
TARMAC are celebrating entering their fifth year of a 10-year partnership with Clapham-based Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust (YDMT).
To mark the occasion, Tarmac teams took part in the first volunteering event of 2024 with two days of planting approximately 1,700 trees at Wildshare with Mearbeck. The event was supported by one of YDMT’s new woodland trainees, a role that has been created with Tarmac’s support to address the shortage of young people coming into the forestry sector, whilst providing environmental job opportunities for people in the Dales.
During 2023, Tarmac employees took part in five volunteering events, completing 375 volunteering hours between them. These events included the planting of 920 trees, building five tree shelters, and the removal of 3,300 plastic tree guards for recycling as part of YDMT’s Plastic Free Woodland’s project.
Over the last two years, Tarmac’s funding has helped YDMT to plant 38,717 new native broadleaf trees in the Yorkshire Dales and surrounding areas, creating 22 hectares of habitat for people and wildlife to enjoy. There has also been the creation of 2,167m of hedgerow, increasing this vital habitat for the most vulnerable and precious wildlife. Since 2022, YDMT, with the help of Tarmac’s funding, has recycled around 20,700 redundant plastic tree shelters from 17 sites across the Dales and Nidderdale, removing plastic pollution from our woodlands and water courses.
Tarmac’s funding has also been used for YDMT’s wider woodland work supporting community growing schemes in the Dales. This includes the ‘Seed to Sapling’ project, which is helping to ensure the right species of trees are planted in the Dales by growing native tree saplings from local provenance seeds.
The scheme was launched in the autumn of 2022, when YDMT partnered with several community groups, giving them the tools, skills, and materials to set up their own tree-growing schemes. It is helping to strengthen YDMT’s efforts to develop a landscape richer in trees, woods, and hedgerows, with tree cover of varying types and densities planted using locally grown stock from across the national park.
The Seed to Sapling project will also provide opportunities for a wide range of people to get involved in tree growing and planting, including opportunities for vulnerable groups from towns and cities near the Yorkshire Dales to learn about and get involved in woodland creation – empowering them to take practical action for nature and engaging them with the wider issues of climate warming and biodiversity loss.
Moreover, Tarmac’s funding has been used to support YDMT’s community outreach work, enabling the delivery of projects like the ‘Woodland Wellbeing’ programme, which offers opportunities for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to connect with nature to improve their mental health and learn new skills.
Richard Hore, development officer at YDMT, said: ‘Support from companies like Tarmac is vital to the work we do in the Dales. We are incredibly grateful for their funding and volunteer support and everything that they have helped us achieve in support of people and the planet in the last year.
Steven Curtin, senior area operations manager at Tarmac, added: ‘It has been another great year working with YDMT and we are enormously proud of how the partnership has developed. We are looking forward to continuing to work together, helping to create new woodlands, supporting people to enjoy the Dales, and protecting the national park.’
