Buxton's jird

Buxton's jird, Meriones sacramenti, is a rodent of the family Muridae that is endemic to the coastal region of northern Sinai in Egypt and to Israel, where it lives in the northern Negev desert and on the coastal plain south of the Yarkon River. It is named for Sir Edward North Buxton, a British hunter and conservationist who was a founder of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire. The animal has dark cinnamon-brown fur and a conspicuous black brushy tail, with a head and body length of 14 to 19 cm and a tail of 11 to 17 cm. It inhabits arid, sandy environments such as coastal dunes, deserts and arid steppes with limited vegetation, and it spends most of its time in burrows. The IUCN Red List classifies it as vulnerable, chiefly because urbanisation and the conversion of land to agriculture are destroying its coastal habitat.