MORE than 100 youngsters from 11 secondary schools across Redcar and Cleveland attended a youth environment conference at the Redcar Bowl this week.

A series of 11 interactive workshops covered a variety of topics, including pond-dipping and invertebrate identification, building bat and bird boxes, making "wacky windsocks" and planning a wildlife garden for school grounds.

The conference was organised by the Tees Forest on behalf of the Redcar and Cleveland Partnership's environment priority group.

Community liaison officer Clare Lowe said it provided youngsters with an excellent opportunity to understand local and global environmental issues.

Catherine Hall, head of environment strategy at Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, said: "The workshops provided exciting ways of introducing a sense of environmental responsibility to our children."