In evaluating ecological situations, we cannot avoid making judgments and giving preference to human values. Not even all human values can be quantified and assigned common dollar values. Ray F. Dasmann notes that birds or dolphins have values to an observer that do not fit any yardstick. Even without knowing a complete dollar total of the value of forests, we have a small idea of the quantity and value of the interest and could tailor our economic system to that. We get our values from knowing what is valuable in nature.
Values usually encode information having survival or prestige importance.
This may be why humans value walking in the woods. Rich sensory experiences can be derived from direct contact with nature. But economists and planners rarely mention these values. Light, wind, dirt, plants, birds, all act during a walk, but not with the meaning of crops or sheep, which is for their utility they just are. People do not live without these things.