It is very intriguing question. The answer I think depends mostly on to whom? I was a witness once of a grant application, when research team wanted to save strictly endemic species of fish in small lake (all together 40 fish). All the workings to restore this lake were somewhere around $1000000. When, as usual :), they have been asked how much money their project will bring/save/contribute to the society, they hesitate for a bit and then answered - $1000000. Does this means that those last 40 fish cost 1 million? For a country or organisation who pays for the restoration it is a loss for the rest of us, a gain?
No general answer to that question. There's a couple of fairly recent and quite different books on the topic worth reading, if you're interested:
This one by Helm and Hepburn, who takes a rather multi-facetted tour-de-force of the topic and the related topic of ecosystem services:
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199676880.do
Then there's quite a different book by Tisdell, who presents and discuss a number valutation studies on the tpic:
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/human-values-and-biodiversity-conservation?___website=uk_warehouse
Enjoy / Bo
In respect to marine life valuation, there was a fairly good paper put out by Cesar, Burke, and Pet-Soede (2003) that took tourism, commercial, and cultural use into effect when estimating cost, while also considering how much money would need to be invested into upkeep in order to combat anthropogenic impacts. Perhaps this would help?
Further, another paper by Brander, Van Beukering, and Cesar (2007) went further into how to estimate the recreational value of coral reefs. Perhaps this could be extrapolated to model valuation in terrestrial habitats and further towards application of establishing the value of a single species?
Lastly, NOAA put out a report on how they established total economic value of whole coral reef ecosystems in only Hawaii in their 2011 technical memorandum. They extensively outline the services of this ecosystem, economic valuation, how they surveyed value, and further modeling of how they could establish value of the reefs through per household values, etc. This could potentially serve as a model for establishing the value of a single species.
Apologies for the marine-focused response, but hopefully these help!
Article The recreational value of coral reefs: A meta-analysis
Article Total Economic Value for Protecting and Restoring Hawaiian C...
Book The Economics of Worldwide Coral Reef Degradation
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