Originally posted by PhotriusPyrelus:

Personally, I explore for the sake of exploring. That said, there's plenty of other resources that incentivize roaming, trees don't really need to be part of that equation. I don't like deforesting the landscape just to have enough wood to build a house. =- \

You don't have to deforest. You can harvest the fallen logs and tree stumps scattered about that you find while you explore, pick up the sticks on the ground, forage gray dwarves, and use the tress that are destroyed by large creatures like trolls, golems, lox, and abominations. You can also chop up the shipwrecks that you occasionally find and sometimes those give you a bonus.

You don't even have to have wood to make coal for your smelter. You can over cook meat and burn it into coal and you can throw anything that respawns into an obliterator and use that to produce all of your coal.