UTTAR PRADESH JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY

The Subarnarekha River system in eastern India supports diverse freshwater and estuarine habitats that sustain native fish populations and fisheries-dependent livelihoods. Rapid environmental change in this basin is increasingly shaped by interacting drivers rather than isolated stressors. Climate change is intensifying thermal stress, altering hydrological regimes, and increasing the frequency of extreme events, while long-standing anthropogenic pressures—especially mining- and industry-linked metal contamination, urban wastewater inputs, and habitat modification—continue to degrade water and habitat quality. This review synthesises current understanding of how climate-driven changes can interact with local stressors to produce non-linear and sometimes unexpected impacts on native fish species across life stages and trophic levels. A structured literature search was conducted using Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar for publications from January 2000 through December 2025, with additional classic references included where directly relevant to multiple-stressor ecology. Emphasis is placed on mechanistic pathways relevant to the Subarnarekha context, including warming–metal toxicity interactions, flow–pollution coupling, habitat fragmentation effects on migration and reproduction, and food-web restructuring. Evidence from the Subarnarekha and comparable river systems indicates that combined stressors frequently yield outcomes that diverge from single-stressor predictions, with local disturbances often overriding or masking warming effects, yet also amplifying vulnerability when physiological limits are approached. Finally, the review proposes an integrated monitoring and management agenda for the Subarnarekha that explicitly anticipates stressor interactions, prioritises ecological connectivity and pollution control, and strengthens climate resilience through adaptive, basin-scale governance.