Important Birds and Trivial Otters

Thirty two miles outside of Newcastle is a city (this is the term it uses for itself) called Cessnock.  Cessnock is the gateway to the Hunter Valley wine district and it probably can't help the fact that the gateway is covered in coal dust.  There are many reasons to travel to Cessnock, for starters if you begin your journey in Newcastle there is the knowledge that at the end of your trip you're thirty two miles away from Newcastle.  Which is a start.  Other than that Cessnock is famous for being the home town (oh all right, city) of an Australian professional darts player.  Oh yes, and Cessnock is slap bang in the middle of the Hunter Valley Important Bird Area.

How does a bird go about getting the "important" label beside its name?  Do they have to take a test?  Is there counselling available for those birds who don't make the cut and have to go through life with the stigma of being officially unimportant?  How do the important birds keep their lesser cousins out of their area?  Are there gates?  Security teams checking IDs perhaps?
"Excuse me sir, but are you an Important Bird?  You're not?  I'm very sorry sir but you can't come in here.  Try the Hunter Valley Utterly Trivial Bird Area just down the road.  Not at all sir, a lot of people make that mistake.  Have a nice day."
And so another socially ambitious bird is crushed and slinks off to join its insignificant fellows.

Of course I'm being silly (What? Never, I don't hear you cry) the importance refers not to the birds but to the area.  Apparently the area is important to birds or its important that birds be there or something.  Since mankind has spent the last century alternately digging huge holes in the Hunter Valley and planting stuff in it the importance might derive from the fact that there are still birds there at all.  Or any other native life bigger than a mosquito.  Yet apparently birds are there, sheltering under vineyards, picking over slag heaps and nesting in the few remaining trees.  Talk about not taking a hint.  Among them is the near threatened Diamond Firetail.  Near threatened is a status that seems a little problematic to me.  Threatened; yes fine, no problem there.  Common as muck; also fine, but near threatened?  To me it brings to mind an ordinary bird standing beside a rarer relative in the hopes of getting some grant money.  Come to think of it since Cessnock is in the important bird area and thus near the Diamond Firetail does that make Cessnock near near threatened?  Possibly a better description would be "almost threatened" or perhaps "not actually threatened at this moment but I wouldn't advise selling it life insurance".

Something else that qualifies as near threatened is the European Otter despite the fact that it pops up everywhere from Ireland to Korea.  It is extinct in Liechtenstein, however since the otter population of Liechtenstein was probably only about two to begin with its entirely possible they're just on a long holiday.  They're quite common in Britain (less so in Korea, possibly dietary differences have something to do with it) or at least they are now.  A couple of decades ago you would have been hard pressed finding any otters in Britain but since that time people have been persuaded to stop dumping pesticides into the water supply and now otters are so numerous that they have to hose them off the runways at Heathrow so planes can land.  As yet, however, I have not heard of any part of Britain (much less Korea) being designated an Important Otter Area.