The students in a fifth-grade class at Cambridge Elementary School in British Columbia, Canada , were on an environmental mission in June. At their annual summer fair, they sold food, crafts, games and face-painting sessions to help save an expanse of forest from the chain saw.

Their efforts, and those of hundreds of other people, have paid off. In an unusual crowdsourcing campaign, more than 1,000 students, philanthropists, sailors, businesspeople and others raised 3 million Canadian dollars, or $2.3 million in American currency, that the British Columbia Parks Foundation needed to buy nearly 2,000 acres in Princess Louisa Inlet. Known as the “Yosemite of the North,” the stunning glacier-carved gorge had been eyed by developers this year.

“We hope that this gift will help you purchase the land and keep it wild forever,” the fifth-grade students said in a letter accompanying the $1,109.38 check they sent to the foundation in June. “One day, we might all have the chance to visit this beautiful piece of wilderness, knowing that we played a role in saving it for future generations.”

Princess Louisa Inlet lies in a region known as the Sunshine Coast, one of the most pristine areas of Canada’s Pacific Northwest, where forest meets fjord and waterfalls topple over sheer granite cliffs. The land has important cultural significance to the shishalh, an indigenous community, and its thickets of cedar and Douglas fir are home to grizzly bears, mountain goats and eagles.