[2] The island is named after Commander James Saunders of the British Royal Navy.

[5] The island has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a breeding population of some 143,000 pairs of thick-billed murres, as well as other seabirds, including northern fulmars and black guillemots.

[6] Under Commander James Saunders, HMS North Star sailed to the Arctic in 1849 in the spring on a venture to search and resupply Captain Sir James Clark Ross' expedition, who in turn had sailed in 1848 trying to locate the whereabouts of Sir John Franklin's expedition.

[7] Failing to find Franklin or Ross, Saunders's mission aboard North Star consisted in depositing stores along several named areas of the Canadian Arctic coast and returning to England before the onset of winter.

However, James Saunders's ship became trapped by ice off the coast of northwest Greenland in North Star Bay.