Georgia wildlife officials worried about growing nonnative species

ALBANY - Fisheries technician Tracy Feltman gets occasional calls from Georgia anglers who believe they&#39;ve caught a piranha, the aggressive, meat-eating Amazon fish. <br> <br> So far, he has not encountered any piranhas. But he has seen a few of their cousins -- pacus, an aquarium fish, and tilapias, a fast-growing African fish that is farmed in the U.S. for food. <br> <br> Department of Natural Resources officials are worried about the growing number of nonnative species turning up in Georgia. Without any natural enemies, they could run amok and throw the natural ecosystem out of balance. <br> <br> Last month, a 5-pound pacu was caught in a private pond in Macon and another was caught in Lake Tobesofkee, west of Macon. <br> <br> Pacus are popular tropical fish sold at pet shops around the country. They eat nuts and fruit. Feltman, a DNR technician in Albany, said, ``I tell everybody it&#39;s a vegetarian piranha.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> The DNR says Georgia&#39;s most threatening alien fish is the flathead catfish, a native of the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio river basins. <br> <br> Flatheads showed up in the Flint River in the 1950s and in others in the 1980s, he said. Anglers have grown fond of them because the are fun to catch. But flatheads -- which can be 50 or 100 pounds -- eat native species with such gusto that some are now threatened.

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