I agree that most people seem to think this is true about wild-animal welfare. However, I don’t think this means wild-animal welfare is well described as a longtermist issue. The definition of longtermism is about when most of the value of our actions is going to accrue, not about when we expect to take more direct actions. So I think the natural reading of ‘longtermist issue’ is ‘an issue that we think is important because working on it will have good consequences for the very long-run future’ (or something even stronger, like being among the most valuable issues from that perspective), not ‘an issue we don’t expect to directly work on in the short term’.
I agree that most people seem to think this is true about wild-animal welfare. However, I don’t think this means wild-animal welfare is well described as a longtermist issue. The definition of longtermism is about when most of the value of our actions is going to accrue, not about when we expect to take more direct actions. So I think the natural reading of ‘longtermist issue’ is ‘an issue that we think is important because working on it will have good consequences for the very long-run future’ (or something even stronger, like being among the most valuable issues from that perspective), not ‘an issue we don’t expect to directly work on in the short term’.