Gelderland province has authorised the shooting of a wolf that twice bit a woman who was running in the Veluwe national park in April.

A DNA test confirmed a wolf had bitten the woman, and that means there is “a risk to public safety”, the provincial authorities told local broadcaster Omroep Gelderland.

The province said that based on expert opinion, witness statements and video footage, the wolf’s behaviour was “purposeful and aggressive” and therefore atypical.

The wolf, which may have been involved in other close encounters with people, came after the woman and would not be chased away, the province concluded. The wolf should therefore be labelled a “problem” and be shot, seeing that alternative measures such as fencing and chasing it away do not work in this case.

The situation is so urgent that opponents of the decision have only been given two days to protest.

However, animal protection organisation Faunabeheer said it wants to study the decision in detail and has asked the court to force the province to give them more time. Otherwise the wolf could be killed as early as this weekend, chairman Niko Koffeman said.

“There is no such thing as a two-day objection procedure,” Koffeman said. “If this wolf is really that dangerous, I’m surprised the park has been open to the public for the last three weeks. The public should have been warned off,” he said.

Gelderland and the Veluwe park authorities have long called for stricter measures against wolves. Attempts by the province to chase the wolves away with a paintball gun were banned in court while Veluwe national park was recently denied permission to shoot wolves, which they claim are decimating the mouflon sheep herd.

On Thursday, the European parliament will vote on changing the wolf’s protected status after agreeing on Tuesday to speed up the process.

MEPs will then vote on whether the wolf’s status should be downgraded from “strictly protected” to “protected”, which would allow authorised culls.