Yeah wildlife & its variety is a good indicator for how much an area is disturbed by humans.

For this reason, I'd prefer to have compact cities with a good amount of high-rise buildings and city parks dotted in between. As opposed to large sprawling suburban zones.

That leaves more space for natural areas outside cities where people are few & far between.

@steerpike on HN coined the "time to sheep" metric, a measure of how long you have to travel before you're surrounded by sheep[0], which correlates reasonably well with quality of living.

Alas, doesn't work very well outside of britain, but it's a good metric :)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42802744