This page is for anyone who hunts in Lozère and finds a ring on a pheasant or partridge: where to report it, who validates it, and what is known about the department. Reports are useful to the ACCAs (approved communal hunting associations) and federations that organise releases; the public only ever sees totals per department. On the administrative map, department 48 belongs to the Occitania region; its prefecture is Mende.
Validating recoveries in Lozère
For department 48, no federation uses RingFollow at present. A ring found in Lozère can still be reported: the report is recorded, and it will be validated by a federation, never by GIBIS. The ring number leads back to the original release: if the federation of the department where it took place is registered, it validates; if not, the report waits, filed under department 48.
Reporting in four steps
- Start with a sharp photo of the ring: the number is read automatically, and you check it.
- Say where the bird was taken: the municipality is used for validation and never appears in public.
- State the species, pheasant or red-legged partridge for example, and if you know them, the sex and circumstances of the recovery.
- Send: with no signal, the report goes out on its own as soon as coverage returns.
Why report a recovery
Every recovery reported gives a date, a distance and a species. Added together, they give an operation's recovery rate and how far the birds disperse after release: enough to adjust future releases in Lozère.
The breeding side: gibis.fr
Species, delivery and release planning are a matter for the breeder: see game birds for restocking and red-legged and grey partridges on gibis.fr.
Key facts about Lozère
Land cover in 2018 (CORINE Land Cover): forests and semi-natural areas lead with 73%, followed by agricultural areas (26%). The rest is mostly artificial surfaces (1%). About 5,180 km², 152 municipalities and 76,486 inhabitants in 2022: those are the orders of magnitude. With the share of artificial surfaces at 1%, the department is in the bottom five of the 96 departments of metropolitan France. Besides Mende, the prefecture, the department has one sub-prefecture: Florac Trois Rivières.
Sources: INSEE (official geographic code 2025, 2022 population counts), OFB / EEA (CORINE Land Cover 2018), geo.api.gouv.fr (areas).
Around Lozère
Five departments border it: Aveyron to the west, Gard to the south-east, Haute-Loire to the north, Ardèche to the east and Cantal to the north-west. Beyond the regional boundary lies the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Among its neighbours, the share of forests and semi-natural areas ranges from 38% (Aveyron) to 69% (Ardèche), against 73% here (CORINE Land Cover 2018). Of these, Haute-Loire tracks its rings on RingFollow.
What the rings say in Lozère
- No validated recovery has been located in Lozère on RingFollow so far.
- No report linked to the department is awaiting validation.
- For comparison, all of France: 3,592 ringed birds in 85 releases and 16 validated recoveries (5 participating federations); details on the Statistics page.
The Occitania region and RingFollow
The other departments of the region are Pyrénées-Orientales, Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Garonne, Gard, Ariège, Gers, Aveyron, Tarn, Lot, Tarn-et-Garonne, Aude and Hérault. None of the 13 departments in the region has a federation tracking its rings on RingFollow at present (see the Federations page). At 152, the number of municipalities here is the lowest among the 13 departments of the Occitania region.
What next?
Once sent, the report is kept; if you left an e-mail address, an acknowledgement follows. The ring number is then matched against known releases; if one took place in a department whose federation is registered, that federation validates the recovery. Without a match, the report stays on file for Lozère, unpublished, until a federation can validate it. Reports are kept for five hunting seasons after the recovery, then retained only in anonymised form for statistics (see the privacy policy).
Game-bird rings: common questions
Who validates a recovery reported in Lozère?
A hunters' federation: the one for the department where the bird was originally released, if it is registered on RingFollow. The Lozère hunters' federation (FDC 48) does not use RingFollow at present, and GIBIS never validates.
Should a ring engraved with an address, found in Lozère, be reported here?
No. RingFollow only covers game-farm rings, which carry no address. Rings from scientific ringing schemes are reported to those schemes; this site's guide tells you more.
Do I have to give my name to report a ring in Lozère?
No. Name, phone and e-mail are optional; an e-mail address only gets you an acknowledgement. Only the validating federation sees what you leave.
Can I report a ring without a mobile signal in Lozère?
Yes. The form keeps the report on the phone and sends it as soon as coverage returns, wherever you are in Lozère.
Why are there no statistics for Lozère?
A department's statistics are only published if its federation tracks its rings on RingFollow and at least 3 releases are recorded there. The Lozère hunters' federation (FDC 48) does not use RingFollow at present.
For federations
The situation of every federation is on the Federations page. A federation that would like to track its recoveries can write to gibis@gibis.fr.
To get an idea of a department page with its statistics, see the sample page (simulated data).