Stuckey Timberland CEO receives Georgia Forestry Association’s 2026 Wise Owl Award at Annual Conference & Forestry Expo
JEKYLL ISLAND, Ga. — The Georgia Forestry Association presented Wade Hall, CEO of Stuckey Timberland, Inc., with the 2026 Wise Owl Award at the Association’s Annual Conference & Forestry Expo, held July 24-26 on Jekyll Island.
Presented every year since 1980, the Wise Owl Award is the Association’s highest honor. It recognizes a member whose career reflects lifelong leadership and service to Georgia’s working forests, its forest products industry and the landowners and communities they support. The award was presented before more than 700 attendees at the GFA Annual Conference & Forestry Expo Awards Banquet – one of the largest annual gatherings of the full forestry supply chain in the United States.
A native of Camilla, Hall leads Stuckey Timberland Inc., the Eastman-based land and timber management company founded in 1956. Hall has spent a career dedicated to advancing the profession of forestry and recognition of Georgia’s 22 million acres of working forests, having served as GFA Chairman in 2014 and Georgia Forestry Foundation Chairman in 2011. Hall’s faith and his roots in South Georgia have anchored a career spent in service to the state’s forests.
“Wade Hall is the kind of person this industry is built on,” said Tim Lowrimore, President and CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association. “He came up in South Georgia, he built a career in these woods, and he has spent it looking out for other people — landowners, young foresters, the folks who work for him. That is what the Wise Owl is for. Georgia forestry is better because of Wade, and so are the people in it.”
As GFA Chairman, he helped elevate private-property rights and eminent-domain reform as priorities for Georgia’s forestry community, ensuring that forest landowners had a strong voice in debates over pipeline development and the use of private land. As Chairman of the Foundation, he helped lead the landmark Ecosystem Services Study, which quantified the $38 billion in public value provided by Georgia’s privately owned forests through clean water, carbon storage, wildlife habitat and other ecosystem services. Together, these efforts reflect Hall’s ability to both defend the rights of individual landowners and broaden public recognition of the far-reaching value of Georgia’s working forests.
The award was presented by Ken Eason, who works alongside Hall as President of Stuckey Timberland and currently serves as treasurer of the Georgia Forestry Association’s 2026 executive committee.
“The intention of the Wise Owl Award would be diminished if a careers’ work, like Wade’s, is not recognized. In addition, what sets him apart isn’t anything you’d find on a résumé,” said Eason. “It’s how he treats people, as the Gospels advise. A lot of us have learned this business standing next to him, and we’re better for it.”
Hall has also worked to secure the future of the profession that shaped his career. He was instrumental in establishing the Stuckey Professorship in Forest Economics and Taxation at his alma mater the Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. His efforts brought together Stuckey Timberland and Pollard Lumber Company to endow permanent research capacity in forest taxation and economics — an area with direct consequences for every timberland owner in Georgia.
“I’m humbled to receive the Wise Owl Award and grateful to the Lord for the opportunities He’s given me throughout my career,” said Hall. “I’ve been fortunate to work with incredible people who have challenged, encouraged, and inspired me. This recognition belongs just as much to them as it does to me.”
In addition to his 20+ years of board service to GFA and the Warnell School, Hall has also served on the Executive Committee and as a long-term board member for the Forest Landowner’s Association. Hall attended Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College before earning his bachelor’s degree in forest resources from the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources in 1991. He and his wife Vanessa are actively involved at Eastman First Baptist Church.
About the Georgia Forestry Association
The Georgia Forestry Association is the leading advocate for Georgia’s forestry community, representing landowners, forest-product manufacturers, forestry professionals and businesses across the state’s forestry supply chain. Founded in 1907, GFA works to promote a healthy business and political climate for Georgia’s working forests and the people and communities that depend on them. Learn more at gfagrow.org.