A series of rare earth elements (RE) were implanted in GaN epilayers to study the lattice site location and optical activity. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry in the channeling mode (RBS/C) was used to follow the damage behavior in the Ga sublattice and the site location of the RE. For all the implanted elements (Ce, Pr, Dy, Er, and Lu) the results indicate the complete substitutionality on Ga sites after rapid thermal annealing at 1000°C for 2 min. The only exception occurs for Eu, which occupies a Ga displaced site. Annealing at 1200°C in nitrogen atmosphere at a pressure of 1 GPa is necessary to achieve the complete recovery of the damage in the samples. After annealing the recombination processes of the implanted samples were studied by above and below band gap excitation. For Er implanted samples besides the 1.54 µm emission green and red emissions are also observed. Red emissions from 5D0 → 7F2 and 3P0 → 3F2 transitions were found in Eu and Pr implanted samples even at room temperature.