A privately funded group continues work on a fast-track plan to stop invasive Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes. The group hopes to release its plan in January. The Detroit Free Press reports one of the options includes a series of barriers in the Illinois River to stop the destructive species from traveling from the Mississippi River through Chicago to Lake Michigan. Minnesota is part of a suit to force federal officials to speed up the effort to halt the fish before they spread further.

With the help of a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, computer scientists and biologists from the U have developed robotic boats -- called Carp Trackers -- that can locate and follow carp, allowing officials to net and remove the fish from lakes and rivers.

Army engineers say they're restoring a high-power setting on an electric barrier that they hope will prevent the invasive Asian carp from migrating from Chicago waters to the Great Lakes and Mississippi River. One official with the Army Corps tells the Associated Press he's confident the barrier is working, and that the higher setting is just an extra precaution.

Researchers are taking water samples from nearly 300 different spots in the Minnesota, Mississippi and St. Croix rivers to determine whether the invasive carp have spread this far upstream.