Valuable - Being able to value, or having value?

My first major concern with Rolston’s piece is that he bases most of his article on the idea that something is not valuable if it is not able to value other things. One of his statements where he says this is, “Animals are valuable, able to value things in their world.” So, animals are valuable; does that mean we must see them as having their own value, or does it simply mean what he said, that they are able to value things? The point is that being valuable, or having value, I think are two different things if you use his definition of valuable. And that is where I think Rolstein’s piece fell apart. I think he is essentially trying to prove that things have value on their own, not because humans give them value. Simple enough. However he then goes on to confuse the issue and say that the reason animals are valuable (they should have value of their own) is because they can value other things. That’s where he lost me. I actually hated this idea and thought he was going off on a limb and pulling some idea out of nowhere. I still think they are two different things. For something to hold its own value, and for something to be able to value other things, are two separate things. Yet he is trying to say that they both are what makes something valuable. I agree with the first one, but not the second.
I think animals and plants have value because they have characteristics and ability’s that are unique to themselves or to their species, and with these unique abilities are able to survive and prosper in this world. That is why I believe they have value. Not because I say that they are valuable, or because they are able to value other things, but because they, themselves have characteristics that make them valuable to themselves. He touched on this topic and in that I agree with Rolston but I strongly disagree with his ideas of animals and plant valuing other things is what gives the animal or plant itself value. In the Hettinger piece points out that just because something is good for a being does not imply that the being values it. We have no idea of the feelings of value that animals or plants have. I don’t think a tree values water, even if we are talking about unconsciously valuing the water. On the contrary, I think that the water is good for the tree in that it keeps it alive and living so that it can make new trees; and that fact is what makes the tree valuable. It is able to take other parts of nature, while maybe not valuing it, and use it to continue its lifecycle. It is continuing a species that is of some importance, or else natural selection would have made it go extinct, and that in itself makes the tree valuable.