The girl who had a close encounter with a wolf in Leusden while on a school outing was not bitten by the animal, experts have said.

Photos show the girl’s injuries are not consistent with a wolf bite, ecologist Glenn Lelieveld told RTL Nieuws. “The mouth of the wolf is not wide enough to cause injury near her navel if it bit her in the side,” Lelieveld said.

Wolf expert Dick Klees of expertise centre Wolven in Nederland said what he had seen did not look like a bite either. “There is a larger scratch but that could be because the child fell over into brambles. The wolf is to blame for that but nothing points to a bite,” Klees said.

It is important for public perception to make clear if the child was bitten by a wolf or not, Lelieveld said. “A scratch because of a fall is different from a child being attacked by a wolf,” he said.

The adults accompanying the children to the woods where the incident happened  say the girl was nipped in the side by the wolf and fell when it let go. The Utrecht provincial authorities said wolf DNA had been found on the girl’s clothes, which officials said also showed a tooth mark which was not investigated.

Utrecht is still going ahead with a request for a licence to shoot wolves, although it has since been advised by animal protection organisation Zoogdierenvereniging that the wolf’s behaviour does not make it a problem.

“The point for us is to know whether or not there was a confrontation with a wolf,” a spokesman told RTL. “Whether it bit the girl or not, the fact that it got so near to the child makes it a very serious incident in our book,” he said.

The province also cited a later incident in which a wolf knocked a three-year-old girl to the ground. It later transpired the wolf had been provoked by the presence of a dog.

Lelieveld said the incident was serious and that a problematic situation occurs if a wolf comes within 30 metres of a person. That is not a reason to shoot it, he said. “It is important to interpret the situation properly. In situations like these, you can choose to chase the animal off, close off areas  or catch the wolf and fit it with a GPS tracker.”

According to a survey by RTL, young people are more positive about the presence of the wolf in the Netherlands than older people. Some 61% of people up to the age of 35 said the wolf belongs in the Netherlands compared to just 18% of people over 65.

Wolves had been absent from the Netherlands for 200 years but their number has been steadily increasing recently. There are currently nine known wolf packs in the Netherlands, but according to research by Wageningen University, that could grow to between 23 and 56, depending on how fast they procreate.