Is listing non-academic interests on academic CVs important?
The convention in an academic CV is not to include information on non-academic hobbies or interests that are not relevant to your professional skills and qualifications. 

You will find this view confirmed on sites that give specific advice on the academic CV. (e.g.: this one).

That's not to say there's never a good reason to include this information; there may be, in some cases. (For example, you might mention your time abroad doing unrelated humanitarian work to explain a chronological gap.) But in academic CVs it's not standard.