Written by Acorn Sales Company, manufacturing stamps and seals since 1964 · Reviewed by Holly R, VP of Sales and Marketing at Acorn Sales, against Board of Licensure of Foresters on 22 September 2026 · Updated 22 September 2026
Maine does not prescribe a seal for a licensed forester. It prescribes an endorsement, and it is mandatory. 32 M.R.S. 5515(9) provides that “plans, maps and reports issued by the forester must be endorsed with the forester’s name and license number during the life of the forester’s license”. The words seal and stamp do not appear anywhere in 32 M.R.S. chapter 76. Two pieces of information, three kinds of document, for as long as your license is live.
Maine states the same duty twice, in parallel, which is worth knowing if you are early in your career. 32 M.R.S. 5514(7) applies the identical requirement to intern foresters: plans, maps and reports issued by the intern forester must be endorsed with the intern forester’s name and license number during the life of that license. Both credentials endorse. That makes an endorsement block useful from your first licensed day, and it is the honest product case here: a stamp that prints your name and license number in one press is not a state seal, and nobody should sell it to you as one, but it answers a duty you actually have on every plan, map and report you issue.
Maine forester seal requirements at a glance
| Requirement | Maine rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Seal required | No. The words seal and stamp do not appear in 32 M.R.S. ch. 76. What is mandatory is a written endorsement of the licensee’s name and license number on plans, maps and reports. | 32 M.R.S. 5515(9) |
| Required elements | There are no seal elements because there is no seal. The mandated endorsement elements, verbatim, are the licensee’s “name and license number”. The same two elements apply to an intern forester. | 32 M.R.S. 5515(9); 32 M.R.S. 5514(7) |
| Size and shape | Not addressed. No size, diameter or shape is published for any forester marking device in Maine. Nothing in the statute chapter prescribes a dimension, and no board rule we could reach does either. Do not infer one from a neighboring state. | 32 M.R.S. ch. 76 |
| Device allowed | Not addressed, which means nothing is excluded. Neither the statute nor the board rules name, require or forbid an embosser, a rubber stamp, an ink stamp or an electronic mark. Maine fixes the information, not the instrument. | 32 M.R.S. ch. 76; Code Me. R. 02-333 |
| Signature and date | Not separately prescribed. Maine requires endorsement with name and license number, which is a content duty rather than a signing formula, and no dating requirement is published. | 32 M.R.S. 5515(9) |
| What must be sealed | Nothing has to be sealed. What must be endorsed is “plans, maps and reports issued by the forester”. Note that Maine’s list is shorter than Alabama’s and Georgia’s: it does not include specifications. | 32 M.R.S. 5515(9) |
| Electronic seal | Not addressed. No electronic or digital seal or signature provision for Maine foresters appears in chapter 76, and no third party digital certificate is required. An endorsement placed in a PDF meets the same two element test as one on paper. | 32 M.R.S. ch. 76 |
| Renewal and lapse | Licenses “expire annually on December 31st or on a date the commissioner determines”. Renewal needs the fee, a written request and completed continuing education, and a forester may renew up to 90 days after expiration with a late fee. The endorsement right runs only during the life of the license, so it ends on lapse. | 32 M.R.S. 5514(5), 5515(8) |
| Firm requirements | None, and none is possible. Licenses may be issued only to individuals, not to firms, companies, partnerships, limited liability companies or corporations. There is no firm endorsement and no firm number. | 32 M.R.S. 5511 |
| Regulator | Board of Licensure of Foresters, within the Office of Professional and Occupational Regulation, Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation. Its rules are at Code Me. R. 02-333. | 32 M.R.S. 5505; Code Me. R. 02-333 |
Does Maine require a forester to have a seal?
No. We read 32 M.R.S. chapter 76 in the Maine Legislature’s own chapter PDF, sections 5501 through 5516, and the words seal and stamp do not appear in it. There is no design, no legend, no diameter and no device anywhere in the Forester Licensing chapter. A licensed forester in Maine can practice a full career without owning a device.
What Maine does require is specific and it uses a mandatory verb. 32 M.R.S. 5515(9): “Plans, maps and reports issued by the forester must be endorsed with the forester’s name and license number during the life of the forester’s license.” Maine writes must where Alabama and Georgia write shall. Both are mandatory and nothing turns on the difference.
The endorsement rule, and the shorter document list
Four parts of that sentence carry weight. The document list is plans, maps and reports. The trigger is issuance by the forester, so the duty follows the document out rather than attaching to a draft. The content is two items: your name and your license number. The window is the life of the license.
Now the detail that separates Maine from its southern counterparts. Alabama and Georgia both reach plans, maps, specifications and reports. Arkansas reaches plans, specifications, maps, reports or documents. Maine reaches three items and leaves specifications out. We are pointing that out because it is what the statute says, not because we recommend treating a specification as unmarked. If you issue a document that is functionally a plan or a report, the label on it is unlikely to decide whether 5515(9) reaches it, and an endorsement on everything you issue costs nothing and answers the question before it is asked.
Intern foresters endorse on the same terms
Maine has two credentials under chapter 76 and they are distinct: Forester at 32 M.R.S. 5515 and Intern Forester at 32 M.R.S. 5514. The endorsement duty is written into both, in parallel language. 5514(7): “Plans, maps and reports issued by the intern forester must be endorsed with the intern forester’s name and license number during the life of the intern forester’s license.”
That is a real contrast with how some professions treat trainees. North Carolina, for instance, prohibits registered appraiser trainees from using a seal at all. Maine does the opposite: the intern forester has the same marking duty as the forester, with the intern forester’s own name and own license number. So if you hold an intern license, an endorsement block is useful now, and the only thing that changes at full licensure is the credential wording you might choose to include and, if it changes, the number.
“During the life of the license”, and the 90 day window
Both endorsement provisions are limited to the life of the license, so the authorization ends when the license does. 32 M.R.S. 5515(8) and 5514(5) set the timing: licenses “expire annually on December 31st or on a date the commissioner determines”, and renewal requires the fee, a written request and completed continuing education. A forester may renew up to 90 days after expiration with a late fee.
That 90 day window is a renewal grace period, not a license. Read it against the endorsement clause and the practical reading is that the endorsement right tracks whether the license is live, rather than on being inside the window to fix it. Maine has no express post lapse endorsement crime of the Alabama or Arkansas kind, and we are not going to imply one. 32 M.R.S. 5504(1) applies the penalties under 10 M.R.S. 8003-C to violations of the licensing requirement, and 32 M.R.S. 5509-A governs denial, refusal to renew and disciplinary action.
Maine licenses people, not companies
32 M.R.S. 5511 limits licenses to individuals. A firm, company, partnership, limited liability company or corporation cannot hold a Maine forester license. There is no entity credential, no entity number and nothing to put in an entity block.
The endorsement follows that. The two mandated elements are the forester’s name and the forester’s license number. A company name on the cover page of a management plan is fine and it does not satisfy 5515(9). Where two licensees work in the same office, each endorses what they issue with their own name and number, which usually means two blocks rather than one shared device.
Practice act, and what the license lets you do
Maine is a practice act. 32 M.R.S. 5502: “It is unlawful for a person to practice forestry or advertise or offer to practice forestry without a license” issued under the chapter, subject to the exemptions at 5503. The prohibition reaches advertising and offering, not just doing, which is the same structure Connecticut uses for its commercial forest practitioner certification.
Both Maine credentials are used with the license number, and the number is one of the two things the endorsement rule names, so the number is the thing to get right on any block you have cut. There is no prescribed credential legend for foresters in Maine of the kind Arkansas fixes with “Registered Forester, Arkansas” or Maryland fixes with “Licensed Forester”. If you want your credential in the block, you are choosing the wording, not matching a statutory one.
No size, no shape, no device, and what that frees you to do
Because Maine prescribes no seal, it publishes no dimension and imposes no device rule. You may print the endorsement, type it, write it, stamp it or place it in a PDF, and the statute is indifferent among those methods so long as the two elements appear on the document.
That turns the buying decision into a practical one. Size the block for the documents you produce: compact for a report cover or a letter, larger for a folded stand map that has to survive a photocopier and a wet field envelope. Choose ink for contrast against your paper. In a state like Maryland or Arkansas you are matching a design someone else fixed. Here you are choosing a working tool and the only real test is whether a reader can make out your name and your license number on the copy they hold.
Why an endorsement stamp earns its place in Maine
The case is repetition and accuracy, not compliance decoration. A Maine consulting forester writes the same two facts on management plans, harvest plans, stand maps, cruise reports and Tree Growth paperwork, often several times per packet and often outdoors. A stamp prints that block identically every time, at a size you chose, on the copy as well as the original.
It also removes one specific failure mode that matters here more than most. A handwritten license number is easy to transpose, and a transposed number is an endorsement that identifies nobody. The statute asks for your license number, not a number close to it. A cut die cannot transpose a digit. Put your name and your Maine license number in the block, add your credential if you want it, and you have one press that answers 5515(9) or 5514(7) every time.
Where to put the endorsement so a reader finds it
Maine fixes the two elements and says nothing about placement. What follows is practical judgment from cutting these blocks rather than a rule, and we are labeling it that way because the statute does not address it at all.
On a management plan or a cruise report, the endorsement usually belongs with the signature block on the cover or the certification page, where a landowner or a reviewer looks for authorship first. On a stand map, put it inside the map frame rather than in the margin: margins are what get trimmed when a map is folded into a field envelope, reduced for a packet or copied at a different size, and an endorsement that has been cut off is not on the document the reader holds. Where a plan goes out as a packet with separable parts, endorsing each part that could travel alone is the safer habit, because a map pulled out and handed to a contractor is a map in circulation under your name. None of that is required by 5515(9). All of it follows from the fact that the duty attaches to what you issue, and documents circulate in pieces.
Ordering a Maine forester endorsement stamp
Send us your name exactly as it appears on your license, your Maine license number, and whether you want Forester or Intern Forester in the block. Because no size is prescribed, tell us what 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 over a Maine winter. The Forester MaxLight Pre Inked Rubber Stamp of Seal at $46.95 holds fine lettering best, and the Forester Slim Pre-Inked Rubber Stamp of Seal at $46.95 is the one that travels in a cruiser vest 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.
The board rules we could not read, and why we are saying so
We would rather report a gap than imply a sweep we did not make. The Board of Licensure of Foresters has rules at Code Me. R. 02-333, in chapters 20 General Information, 30 Advisory Rulings, 40 Educational Qualifications for Issuance of an Intern Forester License, 70 Licensure as Forester, 70-A Licensure by Endorsement, 80 Continuing Forestry Education, 90 Registration of Foresters for the Supervision of Unlicensed Personnel, and 100 Code of Ethics. Chapters 10, 50, 60 and 110 are repealed.
We could not retrieve the text of chapter 20 or chapter 100. Maine’s official rule files returned a not found response for every URL pattern we tried, and the republisher mirror timed out three times. We have the chapter titles and, for chapter 100, the section headings: Code of Ethics and Unprofessional Practice, Definitions, Obligations to Clients, Suppliers and Employers, Obligations to the Public, and Obligations to Other Foresters. The operative text is unread.
Our judgment is that a Maine forester seal rule almost certainly does not exist, because the statute prescribes endorsement by name and license number and never mentions a seal, and a board rule creating a seal without statutory reference would be unusual. But that is a judgment and not a reading, so we are marking it open rather than asserting the board rules are silent on a chapter we have not opened.
One more place to look: Tree Growth Tax Law plans
A marking duty can sit in a neighboring chapter rather than in the licensing chapter, and Maine has an obvious candidate. The Tree Growth Tax Law at 36 M.R.S. sec. 575 and related provisions builds forest management plan requirements around licensed foresters, and those plans are a large part of what many Maine consulting foresters produce.
We did not read those provisions for a marking or signing requirement. If Tree Growth plans are the bulk of your practice, that is worth a look before you assume the licensing chapter is the whole story. It would not change the answer on seals, since the endorsement duty at 5515(9) already reaches plans and reports you issue, but a program specific formality could sit there and we did not check. This page is a research summary and not legal advice.
- Forester Stamps and Seals: State Rules, Sizes and Prices
- Massachusetts Forester: No Seal, No Endorsement
- Georgia Forester: No Seal, Name and License Number
- Forester stamps and seals
Frequently asked questions
Does Maine require a licensed forester to have a seal?
No. The words seal and stamp do not appear anywhere in 32 M.R.S. chapter 76. Maine requires an endorsement instead: under 32 M.R.S. 5515(9), plans, maps and reports issued by the forester must be endorsed with the forester’s 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 whole statutory content requirement. No credential legend is prescribed, unlike Arkansas and Maryland, so if you want Forester in the block you are choosing the wording rather than matching a statutory one.
Do intern foresters have to endorse documents too?
Yes, on the same terms. 32 M.R.S. 5514(7) requires plans, maps and reports issued by an intern forester to be endorsed with the intern forester’s name and license number during the life of that license. Maine treats the intern credential as carrying the same marking duty as full licensure.
How big does a Maine forester stamp have to be?
No size is published, because no device is prescribed. Nothing in chapter 76 sets a dimension or a shape. Size the impression for legibility on the documents you actually produce rather than to match a rule, because there is no rule to match.
Does the endorsement duty cover specifications?
The statute lists plans, maps and reports, and does not name specifications, which is a shorter list than Alabama’s or Georgia’s. We report that as written. In practice, a document that functions as a plan or a report is unlikely to escape the duty because of its label, and endorsing everything you issue costs nothing.
Can my firm hold a Maine forester license?
No. 32 M.R.S. 5511 limits licenses to individuals, not to firms, companies, partnerships, limited liability companies or corporations. Each licensee endorses what they issue with their own name and their own license number.
When does my license expire, and what happens if I am late?
Licenses expire annually on 31 December or on a date the commissioner determines. Renewal requires the fee, a written request and completed continuing education, and a forester may renew up to 90 days after expiration with a late fee. The endorsement right runs only during the life of the license.
Did you read the board rules as well as the statute?
Partly, and we will not overstate it. We have the chapter list for Code Me. R. 02-333 and the section headings for the Code of Ethics at chapter 100, but Maine’s official rule files were unreachable for chapters 20 and 100 and the mirror timed out, so that text is unread. The statute is clear that the duty is endorsement rather than sealing.
