Written by Acorn Sales Company, manufacturing stamps and seals since 1964 · Reviewed by Holly R, VP of Sales and Marketing at Acorn Sales, against State Board of Registration for Foresters on 22 September 2026 · Updated 22 September 2026
Georgia does not prescribe a seal for a registered forester. It prescribes an endorsement, and that endorsement is mandatory. O.C.G.A. 12-6-52 provides that “plans, maps, specifications, and reports issued by a registrant shall be endorsed with his name and license number during the life of the registrant’s license”. Two pieces of information, four kinds of document, every time one goes out under your name. That sentence is the most useful fact on this page and it is the one to build your signature block around.
It is also the honest case for a stamp. Nothing in Georgia law names a device, sets a size or requires an impression, so a stamp here is not a state seal and no supplier should sell it to you as one. What it is, is a way to print a two element block in one press, in the same form every time, on every plan, map, specification and report you issue. That is a real tool for a duty you actually have, which is a better reason to buy one than any state outline printed on a catalog page.
Georgia forester seal requirements at a glance
| Requirement | Georgia rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Seal required | No. Neither O.C.G.A. tit. 12, ch. 6, art. 1, pt. 2 nor Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220 prescribes a seal or stamp for a registrant. What is mandatory is a written endorsement of the registrant’s name and license number. | O.C.G.A. 12-6-52 |
| Required elements | There are no seal elements because there is no seal. The mandated endorsement elements, verbatim, are the registrant’s “name and license number”. Nothing else is prescribed and no legend is specified. | O.C.G.A. 12-6-52 |
| Size and shape | Not addressed. No size, diameter or shape is published anywhere in O.C.G.A. part 2 or in Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220. We read the statute part and the board’s registration and standards chapters and found no dimension. Do not infer one. | O.C.G.A. tit. 12, ch. 6, art. 1, pt. 2; Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220 |
| Device allowed | Not addressed, which means nothing is excluded. Nothing in the statute or the rules names, requires or forbids an embosser, a rubber stamp, an ink stamp or an electronic mark. Georgia fixes the information, not the instrument. | O.C.G.A. tit. 12, ch. 6, art. 1, pt. 2; Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220 |
| Signature and date | Not separately prescribed. The statutory requirement is endorsement with name and license number, which is a content duty rather than a signing formula. No dating requirement is published. | O.C.G.A. 12-6-52 |
| What must be sealed | Nothing has to be sealed. What must be endorsed is “plans, maps, specifications, and reports issued by a registrant”. The duty attaches to documents the registrant issues and runs for the life of the license. | O.C.G.A. 12-6-52 |
| Electronic seal | Not addressed. No electronic or digital seal or signature provision for Georgia foresters appears in the statute or the rules, and no third party digital certificate is required. An endorsement placed in a PDF meets the same two element test as one on paper. | O.C.G.A. tit. 12, ch. 6, art. 1, pt. 2; Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220 |
| Renewal and lapse | Licenses run up to two years and renew biennially, with not less than six and not more than 20 hours of continuing forestry education required, subject to hardship or illness waivers. The endorsement right runs only “during the life of the registrant’s license”, so it ends on lapse. A duplicate license is available for one lost, destroyed or mutilated. | O.C.G.A. 12-6-56, 12-6-58; O.C.G.A. 12-6-52 |
| Firm requirements | None, and none is possible. “Registration shall be determined upon a basis of individual personal qualifications.” Firms, companies, partnerships and corporations cannot be registered, so there is no firm endorsement and no firm number. | O.C.G.A. 12-6-55 |
| Regulator | State Board of Registration for Foresters, attached to the Office of Secretary of State, Professional Licensing Boards Division. Its rules are at Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220. | O.C.G.A. tit. 12, ch. 6, art. 1, pt. 2; Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220 |
Does Georgia require a forester to have a seal?
No. We looked at this in the two places a seal rule could live and found nothing in either. On the statute side, O.C.G.A. tit. 12, ch. 6, art. 1, pt. 2 runs from 12-6-40 to 12-6-62 and the word seal appears exactly once in it, in a provision about the board’s own instrument. The word stamp does not appear at all. On the rules side, Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220 is the board’s own chapter, and we read 220-2 (Registration Requirements, rules .01 through .08) and 220-5 (Standards of Practice, rules .01 and .02) rule by rule. Neither contains any seal, stamp, signature or certificate number provision.
So a Georgia registered forester can practice without ever owning a device. What a Georgia registered forester cannot do is issue plans, maps, specifications and reports without the endorsement, because that duty is written in mandatory terms and it is the operative rule for your paperwork.
The endorsement rule, read closely
O.C.G.A. 12-6-52 is captioned “Licenses - Issuance generally; endorsement by registrant of plans, maps, specifications, and reports”, and the operative sentence is: “Plans, maps, specifications, and reports issued by a registrant shall be endorsed with his name and license number during the life of the registrant’s license.”
Four elements of that sentence do work. The document list is plans, maps, specifications and reports. The trigger is issuance by a registrant, so the duty follows the document when it leaves rather than attaching to drafts. The content is two items and only two: your name and your license number. The window is the life of your license, which is the clause that makes a lapsed registration a real problem rather than a filing matter. There is no size, no border, no seal, no signature formula and no date anywhere in it.
O.C.G.A. 12-6-47 is the board’s seal, not yours
Here is the trap, and it has caught more than one published summary. O.C.G.A. 12-6-47 is captioned “Rules and regulations; seal” and it reads, in the part that matters, “the board shall adopt and have an official seal”. That is the State Board of Registration for Foresters’ own corporate seal, the instrument a state agency uses to authenticate its own records. It is not issued to a registrant, it is not used by a registrant, and it never appears on a forest management plan.
It is also the only occurrence of the word seal in sections 12-6-40 through 12-6-62. A keyword search for seal in the Georgia forestry statute therefore returns one hit, in a chapter about foresters, and a careless reader concludes Georgia is a seal state. It is not. Do not publish Georgia as a seal state off the caption of 12-6-47, and do not buy a seal because someone else did. Alabama has the identical trap at Ala. Code 34-12-35, and for the same reason.
Georgia registers people, not companies
O.C.G.A. 12-6-55 is short and it settles a question people ask constantly: “Registration shall be determined upon a basis of individual personal qualifications.” Firms, companies, partnerships and corporations cannot be licensed in Georgia. Only individuals may be registered.
That has a direct consequence for your endorsement block. The two elements the statute names are the registrant’s name and the registrant’s license number. A company name and a company address are fine on your letterhead and they do not satisfy 12-6-52. If two registered foresters work at the same firm, each one endorses the documents they issue with their own name and their own number, which usually means two blocks rather than a shared one.
“During the life of the license” is the limiting phrase
Georgia words its endorsement right as a grant with a time limit built in: name and license number, “during the life of the registrant’s license”. Read as written, the authorization to endorse simply ends when the license does.
Georgia does not pair that with an express post lapse endorsement crime of the kind Alabama and Arkansas both have, and we are not going to imply it does. What it has instead is the general enforcement machinery: 12-6-57 covers denial, revocation, discipline and the code of ethics, 12-6-60 authorizes injunctive relief, 12-6-61 lists prohibited acts, and 12-6-62 sets the penalty. 12-6-49.1 and 12-6-49.2 cover suspension, including for noncompliance with a child support order. Endorsing after lapse is outside what 12-6-52 authorizes; what follows from that is a matter for the board rather than a specified crime.
The protected title, and what you can call yourself
Georgia is both a practice act and a title act. O.C.G.A. 12-6-61 provides that “no person shall use in connection with his name or otherwise assume, use, or advertise any title or description tending directly or indirectly to convey the impression that he is a registered forester without first having been licensed and registered as a registered forester as provided in this part”, and separately bars unlicensed practice of professional forestry. There are exceptions for landowners managing their own property and for supervised graduates.
The credential is Registered Forester, abbreviated R.F., used with the license number. If you want your endorsement block to carry the credential as well as the two mandated elements, that is allowed and it is common practice; just remember the credential is the optional part and the name and number are the required part.
Biennial renewal and continuing forestry education
O.C.G.A. 12-6-56 sets the renewal cycle: licenses run up to two years and renew biennially, and the board requires “not less than six hours and not more than 20 hours of continuing forestry education” for renewal, with waivers available for hardship or illness. O.C.G.A. 12-6-58 allows a duplicate license where one has been lost, destroyed or mutilated, on payment of a board set fee.
Note what 12-6-58 replaces: the license certificate. It is not a rule about a device, because Georgia has no device to replace. If your stamp wears out, that is between you and your supplier and the board has no role in it, which is one practical advantage of a state that prescribes information rather than an instrument.
No size, no shape, no device, and what that frees you to do
Because Georgia prescribes no seal, it publishes no dimension for one, and there is no device rule to comply with either. You may print the endorsement, type it, write it, stamp it, emboss it or place it in a PDF. The statute cares that the two elements appear on the document and is indifferent to how they got there.
For a buyer that turns the decision into a practical one. Size the block to the documents you actually produce: something compact for a letter or a report cover, something larger for a folded stand map where the endorsement has to survive a photocopier and a field envelope. Choose the ink color for contrast against your paper rather than for a rule. Nobody at the board is going to measure it.
Why an endorsement stamp earns its place
The case is repetition, not compliance theater. A consulting forester in Georgia writes the same two facts on timber sale plans, stand maps, management plans, cruise reports and prescription documents, sometimes several times in one packet, often on a clipboard in a stand rather than at a desk. A stamp prints that block identically every time, at a size you chose for legibility, on the copy as well as the original.
It also removes one specific failure. Handwritten license numbers get transposed, and a transposed number is an endorsement that identifies nobody. The statute asks for your license number, not a number near it. A cut die cannot transpose a digit. If you want the fullest useful block, put your name, R.F., and your Georgia license number in it, which covers the two mandatory elements and the credential in one press.
Where to put the endorsement on the page
Georgia fixes the content and says nothing about placement, so what follows is practical judgment from making these blocks rather than a rule you have to match. We label it that way because the statute itself does not address it.
On a report or a management plan, the endorsement most often sits with the signature block on the cover or on the certification page, where a reader looking for authorship will look first. On a stand map or a timber sale map, put it inside the map frame rather than on the margin, because margins are what get trimmed when a map is reduced, folded or reproduced at a different size, and an endorsement that has been cut off is not on the document. On a multi page packet, foresters who have been through a dispute tend to endorse each component that could travel on its own rather than the cover alone, since a map pulled out of a packet and handed to a logger is a map in circulation. None of that is required by 12-6-52. All of it follows from the fact that the duty attaches to documents you issue, and documents circulate in pieces.
Ordering a Georgia forester endorsement stamp
Send us your name exactly as it appears on your license, your Georgia license number, and whether you want R.F. in the block. Because no size is prescribed, tell us the documents you will be marking, and we will proof the block at actual size so you can read the number before anything is cut.
From the forester range, the Forester Self Inking Rubber Stamp of Seal at $39.95 is the everyday office device. The Forester Regular Rubber Stamp of Seal at $34.95 is the same impression on a hand stamp and pad, which some field foresters prefer because there is nothing in it to dry out between seasons. The Forester MaxLight Pre Inked Rubber Stamp of Seal at $46.95 holds fine lettering best, which is what you want when a license number has to stay readable at small size, and the Forester Slim Pre-Inked Rubber Stamp of Seal at $46.95 is the one that travels in a pocket. For files rather than paper the Forester eSeal Electronic Image Stamp of Seal is $20.00. Browse the forester stamps and seals collection, or contact us with your details.
What we read, and the version note on 220-5-.01
Read in full: O.C.G.A. secs. 12-6-47, 12-6-52, 12-6-55, 12-6-56, 12-6-58 and 12-6-61, and the complete section list of part 2 to confirm that 12-6-47 and 12-6-52 are the only seal and endorsement provisions in it. Read rule by rule: Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 220-2 rules .01 through .08, and 220-5 rules .01 and .02.
Two caveats. First, Georgia’s official code is published under contract and is not freely fetchable, so the verbatim statute text here was read in the Georgia Forestry Commission’s published Georgia Forestry Laws book, which is a state agency publication rather than a commercial republisher. If you are quoting 12-6-52 in a document of your own, confirm it against the O.C.G.A. Second, Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 220-5-.01 has two versions, one effective until 22 September 2026 and one effective 22 September 2026. Neither mentions a seal, and the date of this page is the changeover date, so cite the version current when you rely on it. Chapters 220-1, 220-3, 220-4 and 220-6 were not read rule by rule; they are organization, fee, continuing education and procedural chapters. This page is a research summary and not legal advice.
- Forester Stamps and Seals: State Rules, Sizes and Prices
- Alabama Forester: No Seal, Endorsement Required
- Maine Forester: No Seal, Endorsement on Plans
- Forester stamps and seals
Frequently asked questions
Does Georgia require a registered forester to have a seal?
No. There is no forester seal or stamp anywhere in O.C.G.A. part 2 or in Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. ch. 220. Georgia requires an endorsement instead: under O.C.G.A. 12-6-52, plans, maps, specifications and reports issued by a registrant shall be endorsed with his name and license number during the life of the license.
What has to appear on my plans, maps and reports?
Two things: your name and your license number. That is the entire statutory content requirement. Many registrants also include R.F., the abbreviation for Registered Forester, which is the protected credential, but the credential is optional and the name and number are not.
Is the seal in O.C.G.A. 12-6-47 mine?
No. 12-6-47 is captioned “Rules and regulations; seal” and provides that the board shall adopt and have an official seal. That is the board’s own corporate seal for authenticating its records. It is the only occurrence of the word seal in sections 12-6-40 through 12-6-62, and it is not a registrant’s device.
How big does a Georgia forester stamp have to be?
No size is published, because no device is prescribed. We read the statute part and the board’s registration and standards chapters and found no diameter, shape or dimension. Size the impression for legibility on the documents you actually produce.
Can my firm be registered, or endorse documents?
No. O.C.G.A. 12-6-55 provides that registration shall be determined on the basis of individual personal qualifications, so firms, companies, partnerships and corporations cannot be licensed. Each registered forester endorses the documents they issue with their own name and their own license number.
What happens if my license lapses?
The endorsement right runs only “during the life of the registrant’s license”, so it ends when the license does. Georgia has no express post lapse endorsement crime of the Alabama or Arkansas kind, but endorsing after lapse is outside what 12-6-52 authorizes and the board’s discipline and enforcement provisions apply.
Does Georgia recognize an electronic seal or digital signature for foresters?
Nothing is addressed. No electronic or digital seal or signature provision for Georgia foresters appears in the statute or the rules, and no third party digital certificate is required. Because the duty is to have your name and license number appear on the document, an endorsement placed in a PDF meets it.
