The Magdalena-Santa Marta mangroves ecoregion (WWF ID:NT1417) covers the mangrove forests along the coast of Colombia on the Caribbean Sea, from Gulf of Urabá in the west at the Colombia-Panama border to the Guajira Peninsula in the east.

[1][2] [3] The region is relatively dry, with low precipitation and high evapotranspiration, so the mangroves depend for water and nutrients on the rivers flowing across the estuarine plain from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains to the east.

[3] Although this ecoregion stretches across 750 km of the Colombia coast, significant mangrove forests exist at only a few large sites.

These sites are typically at the estuaries of large rivers or where low-lying plains meet the Caribbean.

Almost half of the mangrove areas have been degraded in the past 40 years by increasing salinity and decreased flows in fresh water caused by human development.