Australia has numerous threatened species that need protection, and limited funding for conservation actions. Understanding the monetary values that Australians place on threatened species can help inform conservation investments and policy. We investigated the preferences of the Australian public for improving the levels of extinction risk for 14 threatened species and two ecological communities using an economic technique called discrete choice experiment. The approaches used in this study have significant potential to contribute to assessments of the ‘total economic value’ of ecosystems by complementing information on the benefits that people receive through ecosystem services, applied through frameworks such as ecosystem accounting under the United Nations System of EnvironmentalEconomic Accounting.