[2][3] It is found in Mexico, Central America, seven mainland South American countries, and Trinidad.

Their face, chin, and upper neck are buffy brown to dirty white with a cinnamon wash. Their lower flanks and undertail coverts are deep brownish olive and the rest of their underparts buffy brown with an ochre cinnamon wash.[6] The rufous-necked wood rail is found in Mexico on the Pacific coast and the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula and generally (though discontinuously) along both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Central America.

[6] In addition, a vagrant spent much of July 2013 at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico.

[7] The rufous-necked wood rail was long thought to be primarily a coastal species, and in parts of its range is known only from mangrove forest.

However, a growing number of inland sightings in deciduous, humid, and montane forest as high as 1,400 m (4,600 ft) are suggestive of elevational migration, with mangroves being only winter habitat.

Though it is generally a secretive bird, when foraging it will often move several meters from cover onto open mudflats and stream banks.

Two nests were described by one author as an open bowl made of twigs and lined with weed stems and both dead and green leaves.

"Mangroves are imperiled by development, pollution, mariculture, and changes in sea level and salinity, all of which are anthropogenically driven.