A rare cougar sighting has been confirmed in Manitoba.

An extremely rare sighting of a cougar has been confirmed in the Lac du Bonnet area of Manitoba.

Conservation officials confirmed the event about 100 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, after a surveillance camera at cottager Russ Friesen's home caught the animal on tape.

Friesen said the animal that walked through his property on Nov. 11 was healthy cougar, about six feet long.

"I feel amazingly privileged," he said. "It was such a majestic animal — and I've seen wildlife all my life."

Cougar sightings are so rare in Manitoba that for a time experts were uncertain the species continued to exist here.

From 1973 until 2004, not a single dead cougar had been reported or turned over to Manitoba Conservation officials. The shooting of a cougar at Stead, 50 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg in 1973, along with detailed observations between 1879 and 1975, established that cougars were in fact resident in the province, according to a research paper by provincial zoologist Bill Watkins.

"We do get two or three sightings a year in the Lac du Bonnet area but this first one where we've actually been able to confirm that is definitely a cougar," said Watkins.

"If you look at the historical records, there were cougars in Manitoba when the first settlers began breaking the prairie and farming. It would appear that for a number of years cougars were absent from the province or in very low numbers. So it could be they're returning," Watkins said. "Or they've gone pretty much undetected because they're such an elusive animal."

Field surveys failed to find actual evidence of cougars over a period of three decades between the mid-1970s and 2004.

Then in that year two dead cougars were confirmed by wildlife officials in western Manitoba.

And in May of this year, Linda Dyck of Plum Coulee, Man., snapped a photo of a cougar running through her property about 120 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg.