The South African Bird Ringing Unit (SAFRING) administers bird ringing in southern Africa, supplying rings, ringing equipment and services to volunteer and professional ringers in South Africa and neighbouring countries. All ringing records are curated by SAFRING, which is an essential arm of the Animal Demography Unit. Contact is maintained by the SAFRING Project Coordinator with all ringers (banders in North American or Australian terminology). The Bird Ringing Scheme in South Africa was initiated in 1948, so 1998 saw the 50th anniversary of the scheme. During this period over 1.7 million birds of 852 species were ringed. There have been a total of 16 800 ring recoveries since the inception of the scheme. This gives an overall recovery rate for rings in southern Africa of marginally less than 1%, averaged across all species. This probability varies enormously across species. It currently contains 164366 records. The original dataset, provided by AfrOBIS, contains all distribution records. The dataset in OBIS Seamap is a subset of the original dataset, only containing marine mammal, seabird and/or sea turtle records.