It is sacred to local indigenous Australian people, an important ecological niche for various species of wildlife, and the object of interest to mining companies.
It, and the wetlands, and seas in its vicinity, rich in seagrasses are an important nesting and feeding site for three species of turtle, and contains substantial colonies of silver gulls.
[4] The interior is stocked with large numbers of the northern brown bandicoot while herds of dugong and dolphin pods frequent its waters.
[6] In 2011, the Western Desert Resources Corporation, together with its partner Sherwin Iron, announced plans that it was planning to run a pipeline from its Roper Bar mining site to carry slurry to the island for treatment there before being offloaded into barges that would ferry the material to ships in deeper water for export to East Asian steel mills.
Sometime afterwards the Dubai company Al-Rawda Resources expressed interest in resurrecting the earlier project, by planning to establish a coastal facility on the area's wetlands where barges could load ore for shipment to container vessels 6 lying 6 kilometers north of Maria Island.