A wildlife problem is a raccoon in the attic. A wildlife problem is a deer on the interstate. A wildlife problem is something that happens to you.
What we have been describing for five months is not that, and calling it that has consequences beyond the merely irritating.
Words pick the agency
This is not a semantic complaint. Federal response is organized by category, and the category determines who is in charge, which authorities apply, and how the money moves.
Filed as a wildlife problem, this belongs to Fish and Wildlife, whose tools are habitat management and population control, and whose budget for the relevant program is smaller than the replacement cost of two transformers.
Filed as an infrastructure problem, it belongs somewhere else entirely, with different authorities and a different order of magnitude of resources.
We have spent five months letting a filing decision make a policy decision.
The thing nobody will say on the record
I have read the same coverage you have. I have noticed, as you have, that every official quoted is careful in exactly the same way, and that the carefulness has a shape to it.
"Not able to characterize intent." "Repeated deliberate ignition events." "Consistent with an entity that does." These are not the phrases of people who lack information. They are the phrases of people who have information and have been told what they may do with it.
I do not know what is in the fourth draft of that assessment. Neither do you. What I know is that four drafts is a lot of drafts for a document about animals.
Call it what you want. But notice that the people closest to it have stopped calling it anything at all.