  We present direct evidence for the contribution of local orbital moments to
the damping of magnetization precession in magnetic thin films. Using x-ray
magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) characterization of rare-earth (RE)
M$_{4,5}$ edges in Ni$_{81}$Fe$_{19}$ doped with $<$ 2% Gd and Tb, we show that
the enhancement of GHz precessional relaxation is accompanied by a significant
orbital moment fraction on the RE site. Tb impurities, which enhance the
Landau-Lifshitz(-Gilbert) LL(-G) damping $\lambda(\alpha)$, show a spin to
orbital number ratio of 1.5$\pm$0.3; Gd impurities, which have no effect on
damping, show a spin to orbital number ratio of zero within experimental error.
The results indicate that the dopant-based control of magnetization damping in
RE-doped ferromagnets is an atomistic effect, arising from spin-lattice
coupling, and thus scalable to nanometer dimensions.
